The Doctor and the Cardinal
by Special Patrol Groupie
Summary: The 13th Doctor goes back to 1788 to keep a promise to an unlikely friend.
1. The Silent Revolution

AN: 1. This is the 13th Doctor, who is female (See "The Trial of River Song"); 2. Koschei (the Master) has regenerated (You can decide for yourself if he's Simm!Master, Cumberbatch!Master or someone-else!Master); 3. Koschei is no longer evil … or is he?

* * *

"So where are we going next?"

That's a question I've heard from nearly all my companions at least once. With most of time and space available to visit, the answers can be infinite. But when Koschei – formerly the Master - asked me that question, I looked at the calendar of the place we were visiting, and saw it was September 9.

"I have a promise to keep to an old friend," I replied, beginning to enter the coordinates of the place and time I needed to go to keep that promise. September 9 was his birthday, which triggered the reminder.

"Of course," Koschei said, sitting on the jump seat. "I'm sure he'll be glad to see you."

I was never sure sometimes, even though Koschei was now recovering from his long spell with the Rassilon-implanted drumming in his head, if he was being sincere, sarcastic or out-and-out malicious. I shook my head. "He won't know," I said. "But it's something I have to do."

Once the old girl was in motion, I turned to Koschei with a serious expression. "Koschei, keep an eye on the console, and let me know if anything's amiss. I need to change my clothes."

"Should I change, too?" he asked.

"Actually, no," I said. "I really need you to stay aboard the TARDIS this time. I have to do this alone."

Koschei frowned, but acquiesced. I went to my quarters and exchanged my usual brightly colored clothes for a black, tight-fitting t-shirt, black leggings and a black pair of sneakers. I pulled on black gloves and a black balaclava, and strapped a black-scabbarded rapier to my waist.

"You look like you're going to steal something," Koschei said when I returned to the console room.

"I am," I said. "And that's why you can't be involved. I'm sorry." I took a couple of anti-grav units from their storage space and checked their charge.

"Do you mind telling me what?"

"I'll tell you when it's over," I said.

He just shook his head. "I don't know how you get into half the things you do, Theta," he said.

"Coming from you, that's really funny," I laughed, then with an effort made my face and tone serious. "Could I ... um ... ask you to leave the console room until I finish this?"

"Am I being sent to my room?" Koschei asked, a bit tartly.

"No, no ... but I am going to lock you inside the TARDIS, I'm afraid."

"Can't have me getting out?" He was clearly irritated. _And_ s_pend … the rest of my life imprisoned with you?_

"Can't have other people getting in," I said sadly. "Really. You don't want to be mixed up with this."

When Koschei had gone away, grumbling, to the library, I locked the doors leading into the console room from the other parts of the ship, took a deep breath and opened the door leading outside. I found myself in a dark, echoing room, floored in marble. I played the beam of my small electric torch about the place. About 20 feet in front of me stood my target: A large marble box, three feet wide and eight feet long, more or less, topped with a sculpture of a robed man sitting up, supported by a cherub and woman in a gown and veil, with another woman, wearing a fashionable mid-17th Century French gown, cast across the foot of the implied bed, weeping bitterly. I crossed the space between me and the tomb, rested my hand on the marble replicas of the main figure's long, slender fingers and remembered the actual event that had inspired this effigy. There, the weeping woman and the woman supporting him with an arm around his shoulders had been the same woman, but there wasn't a good way to show someone in strength and in weakness all at once. ...

I ran my hand over my face. To work: I attached one anti-grav unit to the effigy, pulled my sonic screwdriver out of my pocket and pointed it at the seam between the effigy and the top of the box. The trick was to separate the effigy-lid (which is not the technical term; I'm sorry that I don't know the technical term; I had yesterday off) from the rest of the tomb without damaging any of it. Then, when I had done that, I would attach the second antigrav to the coffin inside, float it up and out of the tomb, replace the effigy and take the coffin back to the TARDIS - preferably without anyone noticing my presence or any changes in the tomb.

But this is me we're talking about here, and it seems that almost nothing I get involved in goes quite according to plan. And truth be told, I wasn't entirely surprised when the alarm was raised. Being as this was 1788, the alarm consisted of someone shouting, then several someone shouting and running footsteps.

I drew the rapier he had given me when he was dying (after I had thrown myself sobbing across his deathbed but before I had held him up to help him take his last few breaths with the least difficulty). It was the first time I had drawn it. It seemed appropriate for this situation.

Or at least it did until the Silents glided into the room.

I had not planned for this at all. No River Song, no guns, no backup, no weapons worth a damn.

But I kept my eyes on the uglies and ran the first Silent through the chest, much the same way _he_ had run that one attacker through the chest in the thicket in Poitou. I shoved its body at his three followers. But before I could do much else, they thrust their dying compatriot aside and one of them pointed a finger at me, discharging tens of thousands of volts of electricity through my body. You don't want this to happen to you under any circumstances. True, I could withstand a lot of this kind of abuse (like the time Koschei zapped me in that junkyard), but the Silents seemed to have an unlimited supply of energy, and there were three of them ...

Koschei appeared at the door of the TARDIS, an eye drive in place, an energy weapon in his hand. He soon showed he had not relearned the Time Lord disdain for killing. When the last Silent ceased his attack, I stumbled back against the open tomb, dropped the rapier and tried to catch my breath. Koschei frowned, approaching me, smoking energy weapon in hand.

"Your TARDIS told me to put this on and take this weapon, and she unlocked the doors," he explained, taking in the scene without the distraction of gray-faced mouthless goons pointing their long deadly fingers at me. When I didn't say anything, he strolled up to the tomb and peered at the coffin inside. "Grave robbing, Theta? That's got to be a first, even for you."

"Not grave robbing, Koschei," I said, turning around and engaging the antigrav on the coffin. "Saving him from grave robbers. This lot -" I gestured at the dead Silents - "wanted his DNA so they could clone him." Or at least they had last time I saw him.

"But why do they want to clone Cardinal Richelieu?" he asked. "And why are_ you_ trying to stop them?"

"Probably for the same reason," I said, pushing the coffin into the TARDIS.

Koschei shut the door behind us. "You're not making any sense whatsoever, as usual."

I left the coffin floating there and pulled the takeoff lever. "Well, get comfortable, Koschei; this is a long story ..."


	2. A Young Cavalier in Paris

II. 1604/2001

I was aiming for 18th-century Paris, France. I got the country right, anyway.

The old girl had landed in the middle of a small forest in a springtime, and it was a little tricky to get out of her and it, especially wearing the kind of dress appropriate to court life in 1750 – blue silk, hoopskirted, cut low in the front, with several rows of lace on the arms. I should have changed, but I wasn't yet aware how far off I was geographically or chronologically. I stumbled through the woods toward what seemed to be a clearing, and found myself on a narrow road between the thicket and endless flat fields that seemed to be only used by horses and people on foot, and that rarely. The hoofprints and footprints in the dirt were faint ... almost as faint as the sound of galloping horses in the distance, coming closer. Only then did I remember how unusual it was for a woman to be alone on a remote road like this. (I was still getting used to the implications of being female in a primitive society applying to me.) And never mind that I was extremely overdressed for the occasion.

Before long I heard youthful laughter over the galloping, and made out a party of three: a slender adolescent girl riding sidesaddle between two slightly older boys, one strapping, the other still a stripling. All three checked their mounts to a walk as they saw me, came to a halt about two yards away. They had, I imagined, some family resemblance - with aquiline noises, hooded dark eyes, high cheekbones and disdainful mouths. Their horses were excellent; the saddles and bridles and reins well made of good leather; and their bearing seemed to indicate that they were not strangers to court life.

They looked at me, then at each other, and they burst out laughing. I didn't have to wonder why - their fine riding clothes gave the game away; they all had curled feathers in their hats and curled hair or wigs; and the style was much earlier than 1750. So the old girl and I had another difference of opinion in destination – the question was, where were we? And why?

The bigger of the two boys leaned forward and smirked at me. "Who are you?" he asked in the kind of tones used at court to a servant.

"Therese, monsieur," I said.

"Are you looking for His Majesty the King?"

"Well, no," I stammered. They all laughed again, and the younger boy leaned forward.

"Then how come you to be dressed like that here?" he asked pointedly in a voice far more commanding than the elder boy's. I glanced at him. His eyes were very bright, and I found it difficult to stop staring into them.

"I, uh, took a wrong turn ..."

More laughter. "Mademoiselle," the elder boy said, "you are hundreds of miles from Paris, and the King is not hunting just yet."

"Well, then, what are_ you_ doing here?" I asked.

"We live here," the younger boy said.

"Oh do you?" I shot back. "And what noble chateau has the honor of sheltering the three of you from the elements?"

"Chateau Richelieu," said the older boy. "I am its seigneur."

That seemed to call for a curtsey, and I didn't want to draw further attention to myself, so I curtseyed.

"Well, I don't wish to trouble such noble people any more than I already have, so if you'll excuse me," I said, and dove into the forest, catching my skirt in a thorny bush. Gratefully I heard the horses gallop away, and I was just beginning to try to detach my frock from the vegetation when I heard a single horse approaching.

"Mademoiselle?" It was the strong voice of the frail boy. I held still.

"Mademoiselle? he called again. The voice was younger-sounding than it had been, concerned even, and a touch eager somehow. "Are you there? Are you in trouble?"

"No," I said. "I'm just stuck." I tore the skirt away from the thorns. "There! I'm unstuck."

He folded his arms and shook his head with an amused smile on his face, the feather bobbing. "Really, why are you wearing_ that_ out here?" he asked. "That's a court gown worth hundreds of livres you've spoiled - although I confess the fashion is unfamiliar to me. Nevertheless, a court gown. The king isn't here, you're miles from the nearest house ..." The smile vanished and his hand flashed to the slender sword at his side. "Did something happen?"

"My honor is intact," I said flatly.

His eyebrows went up and he studied me for several awkward moments. "Listen," he finally said, drawing the rapier and pointing it at me, "something's very strange here, and if you don't explain yourself, I will take you prisoner until I am satisfied with the explanation."

"What gives you the right to do that?" I snapped.

"My Lord brother, the seigneur," he answered loftily. "I am the Marquis de Chillou. You are on our land."

"All right," I said, deciding to hit him with the truth, since I honestly couldn't think of a plausible lie. "I'm a time-traveling being from another planet, and my ship went off-course. I landed over yonder and thought I was at Versailles in 1750, which I'm obviously not. Where am I, by the way, and what year is it?"

"Don't play games with me, mademoiselle," he said. "Even if you were going to Court you would not dress like that at Versailles."

"Why not?"

"It's only a hunting lodge, everyone knows that."

"It's more than that where I was going –" which was also the truth.

"Be silent. You will come with me -"

I fled. The TARDIS was some 200 yards away, but I thought I could get enough distance between us to make it even if he remounted. And I would have escaped him if I hadn't tripped on the old girl's threshold and gone sprawling on my face. The hooves thudded to a stop and a splattering-crunching sound.

I turned to face him as he walked up to the old girl and peeked inside. He quirked one eyebrow, and I prepared for the bigger-on-the-inside observation.

"What is this thing?" he asked. "I've never seen anything like this in Paris, never mind Poitou."

"I told you, I'm a time-traveller. This is my ship."

"I told you, mademoiselle, don't play games with me. I'm not a peasant, dupe, nor even the average nobleman. My brain does much more than fill in the space between my ears. You can't travel through time; time is a measurement, not a … thing, not like the ground or the sea."

Now that was an original statement. Wrong, but original; a good riposite for a person who hadn't even heard of time travel until a couple of minutes ago. And then I belatedly realized something._ Poitou_. _Marquis de Chillou. Richelieu. _This was the future Cardinal Richelieu, the first prime minister of France. His early history ran through my mind: A third son, destined originally for a military career, he became a priest when the family's second son, Alphonse, became a monk in a contemplative order. He was made a bishop in a diocese that the family was entitled to somehow (machinations of religious bodies never made sense to me). Apparently I'd come across him before he was thrust into the clergy, which made this early in the first decade of the 1600s.

"Time is not a measurement; minutes and seconds and years are," I said, as he examined the interior more critically from the doorway. "Time is not visible, but it can be traveled through, like the air. And everyone does travel through it, carried along on the current, as if in the ocean. So why can't you build a boat so you're not at the mercy of the current?"_ Time is not the boss of me._ "If we get in that box and certain things happen, we can turn up any time you please. The creation of the universe. The end of the universe. Paris in the year 2000."

"All right," he said. "Take me to Paris in the year 2000."

"And if we do end up in Paris in the year 2000, when I bring you back you'll have me charged with witchcraft."

"Nobody believes in witchcraft anymore, except a few priests and ignorant peasants," he scoffed.

Richelieu would go on to write seriously about witchcraft and to convit some of his enemies of it, but of course I couldn't tell him that. I allowed my skepticism to show, and he put his right hand over his heart. "I swear it on my honor as a gentleman and a cavalier of France, I will not have you charged with witchcraft," he said.

"All right, come on," I said, getting up. Richelieu strode in first, leading his stallion, as if he owned her. I closed the door behind me and watched as he slowly turned a full 365 degrees.

"Well?" I finally said.

"Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to say something about the inside being larger than the outside?"

"Very realistic tromp l'oeil," Richelieu said dryly.

I wasn't sure exactly what he considered part of the illusion, so I just went to the console and set our course. When I looked up, he had assumed a jaded expression – which I would come to recognize as his means of dealing with the extremely unfamiliar situations I would lead him into.

"We need to get your horse into a suitable place with food and water, and then we need to change into more suitable clothing for the period," I said. "Follow me."

I led the horse to a stable room the TARDIS had just created, with a bed full of soft hay, a manger full of more hay, water gurgling from a hole in the wall to a trough, and apples and oats and other horsy treats, as well as all the equipment needed to care for him. After the boy rubbed his horse down and hung up the saddles (saying that he usually didn't do that himself), I took him to the wardrobe. His eyes grew a bit larger as he took it all in, but only momentarily, and he still looked bored.

"You cast a wide net in your collections," he said casually.

"I've had time," I replied, leading him to the 21st century section. He was as tall as and as slender as I had been in my eleventh incarnations, and probably could wear my tenth's clothes without looking too absurd, but neither of them wore anything I'd consider genuinely suitable for the period, not if you wanted to go incognito. Well, maybe my eleventh had, if I stripped it down and mixed it up some ...

I handed Richelieu a pair of black jeans, a lavender-colored Oxford shirt, and a scuffed pair of Doc Marten's. He looked at it all with some confusion, until I realized that his 17th-century underwear was unsuitable - too baggy - to fit under the jeans. So I scared up a pair of Y-fronts and an undershirt, and for good measure a pair of socks.

"These go on underneath," I said, "and the shirt should be worn over the top of the trousers, with the top button or two unfastened. The socks need no explanation."

"Is this all?" he asked.

"Well, we can find you a jacket if you need one," I said.

"Isn't there ... a hat? A collar? Gloves?"

I shook my head.

"A sword, some way to protect myself - and you?"

"No, don't really need one," I said, "and in any case it's usually illegal to walk around armed."

"Illegal?" he exclaimed. "Any ruffian could just walk up to you and kill you! How do they maintain order in your time, I beg to know?"

"It's not 'my time,' and there's police around to help maintain order," I said, deciding to skip the sociology lecture. "Now put your clothes on and meet me near the entrance."

In a dressing room near my small collection of women's clothes, I got out of the torn court gown and into jeans and a T-shirt. When I met up with him again, he had correctly assembled his borrowed outfit, but he was still wearing the wig that people like the Stuart kings and the early Bourbons were seen in. It made him look something like a refugee from a 1980s hair band.

"This will never do," I said, pulling off the wig. A mane of thick, straight shoulder-length black hair tumbled down. Now he looked like a refugee from a 90s grunge band. He was actually a bit skinnier than I had been in my eleventh – he had a well-proportioned frame, but very little flesh upon it.

"Hey!" he shouted.

"You look like a musician of low repute with that wig and those clothes," I explained.

He snatched the wig back. "Then let me wear my own gear."

"Can't. You'll stand out like a flamingo among doves."

"What's a flamingo?"

"A tall, orange bird."

He sighed and tossed the wig onto a nearby chair. I handed him a comb, which he looked at for a moment as if I had handed him a small turd, then sighed and ran it through his hair, scowling at himself in a full-length mirror. He then used the mirror to examine himself from several angles.

"I feel ridiculous," he finally announced, flinging the comb onto the floor. "This is … this is not proper clothing for a man of my station – or any station. This is an absurdity. This-"

"Everyone will be dressed like that, or worse," I said. "I mean, look at me!"

There was nothing immodest about my clothes by early 21st-century standards – the shirt wasn't form-fitting; the jeans weren't tight – but his eyes roved over my body like he was wondering how much I charged for my services.

"My eyes are up here," I said. A slight flush brightened his hollow cheeks. I hurried on before he could say something stupid. "The weather's good, so you won't need a coat or anything else. Ready?"

He nodded, and I led him to the entrance. He opened the door.

"Sacre bleu! What in God's name is that?"

"The Eiffel Tower," I said.

"It's hideous," he said. "Ma foi! Why did the King allow such a monstrosity to be built?"

"Actually, it's considered very beautiful. It's famous all over the world. It's _the_ symbol of Paris."

"Then Paris must be hideous, and the King blind or utterly lacking in taste."

"There is no king," I said mildly, guessing that bit of information would cause his head to figuratively explode. "France is a republic."

But he just shrugged, back into his protective boredom. "Well, that explains a lot," he said.

"Hideous" seemed to be Armand's verdict of anything built after 1700. He passed other judgments on the time: Automobiles, although very convenient, stank up the air and hurt his ears; buses and trains did the same thing; people were rude and ill-dressed (as I had warned him); and he dove for cover before I could tell him that the object going by overhead was just an airplane, and that they hardly ever fell out of the sky. I ended up taking him out to de Gaulle to watch the planes take off and land before he would believe that they were in fact heavier than air and still flew.

The food and wine, though, met with his approval; and to my surprise he liked the movies - we went to see "Le fabuleux destin de Amelie Poulain" and not only was he duly impressed with the technology involved, he enjoyed the story itself. (I didn't realize it at the time, but the fact that "Amelie" was in the theaters meant I'd landed us in 2001 instead of 2000. Oh well.)

Did I call him Armand, and not Richelieu? Yeah, I did. And I called him that to his face. With his permission. We got onto a first-name basis over lunch. The wine helped.

"I have to admit something," he said with an embarrassed smile that seemed out of place. "I am not exactly a marquis. Just call me Armand."

"And my name isn't really Therese," I said.

"It didn't seem likely that someone from ... elsewhere ... would have that name," he agreed, smiling. "So what are you called?"

"The Doctor," I said.

He looked incredulous but unsure of what to say. "Who ever heard of a woman doctor?" he finally demanded.

I wasn't entirely certain what kind of doctor he meant - just someone with a lot of learning, a physician or what - so I had to let that one pass. "You asked me what I'm called. I'm called the Doctor."

There was more to that discussion, but it was boring, and of course I won the argument - but an agile verbal swordsman already, he made me work hard for the victory. Back to the day: Sightseeing, the airport, lunch, movie, more sightseeing, dinner, and a bit more sightseeing.

As we wandered through the streets, he would make ironic remarks about the people we passed that made me laugh. If I didn't laugh, he'd poke me in the ribs. I finally poked him back (noticing how very prominent they were) and he looked at me as if I had gravely insulted him, as if he would challenge me to a duel if I were a man, and I'd just laugh at him, which made him shake his head ruefully and smile. He was prone to pranks; he loosened the salt shaker during lunch, but I only raised my eyebrow and tightened it up again. He got me back by switching our after-lunch coffee cups, after I remarked that I hated sugar in good coffee. Of course, being French, Armand drank his coffee with a heaping spoonful of sugar. We argued a bit over which way was better. When I drank the sugared coffee and almost spat it back out again, Armand smiled. "Now tell me whose coffee is better?"

"This isn't coffee, this is coffee-flavored syrup," I gagged. And then I saw he was stirring "my" coffee with a smirk – he had dumped sugar into it, too, so he ended up drinking both cups.

He did other things, like switching price tags in shops – but he was caught by the shop owner, who lectured us about how young people have no sense, no respect, no manners these days. Armand looked properly contrite until she turned her back; then he put his thumbs in his ears, wiggled his fingers and stuck his tongue out. (Oh, how I wish I had a picture of that.)

We went past a store that sold musical instruments, and it was as if he got sucked inside against his will. He was almost visibly relieved to recognize acoustic guitars, though the electric variety gave him pause; and when someone demonstrated it for him, he looked at me as if to say that he had heard the anthem of Armageddon itself. I told him if he wanted to play a guitar, I had one back "home." Then we went to a record store.

True story: He got into the Beatles. He knew "If I fell in love with you," "Norwegian Wood" and "Yesterday" on the guitar. He later told me he played "Yesterday" for Marie de Medicis once, and she didn't like it very much.

At dinnertime, we unfortunately picked a new restaurant that hadn't quite worked out all the kinks yet. We were seated promptly enough, but it was about 15 minutes before the waiter took our order, and each part of the meal - the wine, appetizer, soup, salad - was progressively slower to arrive. Armand was tired, but more to the point, he was very hungry and he had very little patience for incompetence.

Finally, the main courses arrived. I had bifstek and pommes frites, which were both acceptable if not spectacular, but Armand cut into his roast chicken, exclaimed aloud and threw his cutlery onto the table in disgust just as the waiter had the misfortune to pass our table again.

"Is something wrong, monsieur?"

"I was not aware that the 'roast' chicken was served raw in this establishment," Armand snapped with a Gallic gesture of contempt. "Was that on the menu, and I just overlooked it? Are you so far behind that your chef decided to skip a few steps in the preparation? Or maybe you just like to poison random customers for fun?"

"We can fix that, sir, please accept our apologies." And the waiter took the plate and hurried off. Armand did not look satisfied at all. He sipped at his glass of Graves and wrinkled his nose, nibbled on a slice of bread and frowned, then noticed I was not eating.

"Is your dish as bad as mine?" he demanded, as if it would be my fault if it were.

"No, it's fine."

"Well, don't stare at me, eat it!" he snapped irritably.

"I didn't want to be rude to you by eating in front of you," I said loftily.

"How does sitting there simpering at me and letting your food get cold help me any? Eh? Eh? Maybe you think some of the heat your steak gives off transfers over to my chicken?"

I had a few forkfuls of my meal. Armand watched each slice of beef, each baton of fried potato, travel from plate to mouth with the intensity of a famine victim – and he kind of did resemble one with his thin face and large eyes.

"Would you like a bite?" I asked.

Armand looked like I had just suggested he paw through the garbage for his dinner instead. "If I'd wanted steak and fries, I would have ordered steak and fries!"

Before I could concoct a lecture on modern manners, the waiter came back with the chicken. He put it in front of Armand without a word.

"And while you're here, the wine is too warm, the bread is stale and the butter is rancid," Armand said by way of thanking him. "I suppose you wish to demonstrate to all Paris how not to run a restaurant."

"Thank you for your kind words," the waiter said, leaving in a huff.

"Cheek!" muttered Armand, cutting into the chicken, taking a bite and spitting it into his napkin.

"What?" I said.

"Overcooked!" he spluttered. "Dry, stringy, and oversalted! What is this?"

"He probably spat on it too," I said. "What did you expect?"

"I expect chicken to be cooked properly, the wine to be at least palatable, the bread reasonably fresh, the butter not to taste rancid and the servants to know their jobs_ and_ their places," Armand hissed, raising his hand and snapping his fingers. "Garçon! Garçon!"

I wanted to crawl under the table. The waiter turned to the maitre d', who sauntered over. Armand didn't even let the man speak.

"Look, you, do you intend to have a good restaurant or not?" Armand demanded. "If you do, then bring me some chicken that is properly cooked. And if not, that's your own business, but I still intend to have a portion of decent roast chicken, and I'm not used to having to ask twice."

Armand got the chicken the way he wanted, eventually, but the staff was extremely rude to both of us; claimed they were out of all their desserts (although I saw others served what looked like very fluffy chocolate mousse); and when we paid, the matire d' said, "Perhaps it would be best for all of us if you did not return."

"Never fear," Armand said, and although I was appalled at his high-handed behavior, I smiled at the irony.

"What was wrong with them?" he asked me later after we had found a place to have dessert, which improved his mood. "They acted like they were better than they were."

"You acted like they were nothing," I began.

"They are nothing, or very close to it."

I frequently have this sort of dilemma with my companions. On the one hand, I do like the idea of leaving people better - by which I mean more compassionate, more self-sacrificing, more aware - than they were. On the other, I can't turn them into Time Lords, and in Armand's case I really couldn't change him. Not that I would be unable to influence him; he was susceptible to well-reasoned arguments and underneath it all he was remarkably sensitive to other people's moods. The problem was that in his time, they didn't really understand how to lead by inspiration. Some people did, but they did so by instinct; and it was more or less acceptable to treat people as you pleased as long as it worked. Armand would go on to make himself a lot of political enemies he didn't need because of his sarcasm. For example, a high-ranking opponent of his at court cancelled a meeting with him, saying he was ill. Later that day, Armand ran into him at the queen mother's residence and said loudly, "But sir, you said you were sick!" And then there was a letter to a general who wasn't getting things done fast enough for Armand that ran remarkably like his acidic question to the matire d', starting "This letter is to learn if you intend to command the army or not." If you asked Armand why he said things like that, he would say that the liar deserved to have his lie exposed, or that the poky general needed a swift kick in the rear; but the problem with that reasoning, at least as it applied to people like that, was that they were likely to resent having their shortcomings exposed and derided instead of admitting that maybe Armand had reason to be annoyed. I think a British person would not take those words so personally (a Time Lord definitely wouldn't), but - and I don't mean this as a criticism - the French are different, and in any case he was a courtier – _everything_ is personal at court. If I managed to convince him that he should work to make people like him, or at least avoid angering them pointlessly, he would end up even more powerful than he would be governing strictly by force and fear. And the problem with_ that_ was that history would change in ways that would be apocalyptically detrimental in the future.

So I changed the subject.

After dinner, he was visibly flagging, but since we had to go back to the Tour Eiffel to return to the TARDIS, I talked him into going to the top observation platform of the tower to look at the nighttime sprawl. He was duly impressed. "It's like the heavens have come down to Earth," he said softly, and I could feel him trembling.

Oh yes, he had insisted that I take his arm whenever we were walking outside. It was what a gentleman did for a lady when escorting her. I had tried to argue that I was escorting him, but he defeated me on that count: We were mutually escorting each other, yes, but a gentleman still offered his arm to a lady, and the lady always took the gentleman's arm, even if she did feel (he said with a meaningful gleam in his black eyes) that she could defend herself quite well, thank you very much. I still attempted to argue that nobody did that anymore, as the threat was generally not so continuous these days, but one of the first couples we saw were walking arm in arm, and he wouldn't take no for an answer afterward. By the time we got back to the Tower, I was taking his arm automatically. Sometimes I had the feeling that he was leaning on me for support, not vice versa, but I guessed that he would take special offense if I pointed it out, so I made no comment, avoided suggesting going "home" until I could claim to be tired, and otherwise pretended not to notice his increased blinking and moments of absent-mindedness.

Anyway. We strolled back to the TARDIS, and this time he let me precede him inside. Once the door was shut, he permitted himself an enormous yawn, then smiled sheepishly at me. "I needed that," he muttered.

"Is it a sin to be sleepy?" I asked.

"It's very bad manners to yawn like a cavern," he replied.

"Then I shall show you to your chamber. The TARDIS set it up while we were gone; I think it will be to your liking."

"The TARDIS ... ?" He yawned again. "Never mind. I'm sure I could sleep on the bare floor with no covers right now if I had to."

But the old girl had come up with an elaborately carved four-poster bedstead with a canopy and curtains around it, all richly embroidered, and matching furniture and decor that would have suited the Cardinal-Duc that he would become. As it was, he seemed overwhelmed by the room that greeted him. He turned and kissed my hand, but made no flowery speech, nor wished me a good night. All he said was "Thank you" before he shut the door in my face. I didn't take it personally.

But I didn't sleep very well that night.

In the morning he claimed he had slept well, but he looked flushed and glassy-eyed, and when I took his arm, it was noticeably hot. Still, he didn't complain, and I think he would have gritted his way through another day of wandering around Paris 2001 (after all, how often did most people of his time get a chance to see a familiar city 400 years into the future?) had he not succumbed to a migraine just outside the TARDIS. I thought he had just gotten it, but he told me he was already three days into it when he first saw me – he had gone riding with his brother and sister hoping to shake the pain, or at least distract himself from it.

"Do you mind if I do something?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"Let me touch your forehead for a moment."

He got a sly expression on his face. "No, no, it's just … I want to make sure you don't have a fever."

"I think I do," he said, "but I defer to your judgment."

I could sometimes sense pain in others this way, if it were at a certain level. When I touched Armand's forehead, the pain was so intense I nearly fainted – he caught me and held me up until the feeling passed. When I looked at him again he was looking back with the same expression he had always worn – but now the exasperated resignation didn't seem aimed at the fact that most people around him were unutterably stupid, but to the way his body perpetually betrayed him.

"Maybe I should take you back home," I said.

"Yes, I think you're right," he said reluctantly, letting me lead him back into the TARDIS. I deposited him at the jump seat, went to the console and looked up at the display, thinking about engaging the medical scanner. It would be of historical interest to know exactly what caused the Cardinal's poor health. But if I knew that, I'd want to cure it, and the thought of what Armand might accomplish if perfectly healthy provided a deterrent to my curiosity.

I brought him the clothes and wig he had left in the wardrobe, then returned to change into something more suitable while he got dressed. This time I was wearing a riding habit similar to his sister's.

"Now that's what you should have had on in the first place," he told me with a wink.

"You hush," I said, winking back, thinking that Dumas pere would have written a very different novel had he known this Armand.

I fetched his horse and when the TARDIS landed, Armand opened the door and led him outside. The stallion began to pull backward, snorting, then reared. Armand had trouble holding onto the reins.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I don't know ... he never acts like this," Armand said. "Maybe there's someone -"

"Stand and defend yourself!" called a voice, and three men jumped out of the bushes, swords drawn.

"Get back!" Armand hissed at me, drawing his sword. "Save yourself!"

I did duck back into the TARDIS, but I watched through the open door as Armand engaged the leading attacker, who was shorter than Armand (they all were), but more powerful and in better health (they all were), though wearing an eyepatch. Still, Armand fought amazingly well, and if he hadn't suddenly stumbled for no obvious reason, he might have fought them off. Instead, the trio swarmed over him.

"Armand!" I shouted. "Throw me your sword!"

"What do you expect -" he began.

"JUST DO IT! NOW!" I yelled. Two of the men fell back as Armand kicked them; the rapier sailed up over the thugs' heads and in my direction. I lunged and caught it left-handed, turned and parried left-handed as the leader turned to do away with me. He sneered at the idea of fighting a mere woman. I disarmed him before he could say anything, then kicked him in the opposite direction and grabbed his sword, which was far more substantial than Armand's. I twirled both swords in a way that looked threatening but couldn't actually do much harm itself, but it had the effect I wanted, and the other two thugs ran away. (And don't ask me about twirling two swords of such dissimilar weight!)

Armand struggled to his feet, took his rapier back as if insulted I had succeeded where he had failed (he probably was, come to think of it), and approached the first attacker.

"Who sent you?" he demanded, his voice strong and imperious. The man ignored the command, though he looked well frightened.

"I'd suggest you answer the question," I said, coming up to Armand's side.

"The Doctor!" the man exclaimed, wide-eyed and ashen with evident fear.

Armand looked at me, then put his right foot firmly on the man's chest, the point of his rapier at the man's throat.

"Who sent you to kill the Doctor?" he demanded.

"Nobody sent me to kill the Doctor," he gasped.

"Oh, so you just decided to do it yourself?" Armand sneered.

"No ... they sent me ... to kidnap... you," he said.

"Me?" Armand echoed. "Why me?"

But the man's strength erupted, and between sitting up and grabbind Armand's leg, he heaved Armand (who probably weighed 140 pounds soaking wet) off to the side. Armand rolled, sprung to his feet, still armed - and a moment later he was pulling his rapier out of the man's heart. The man collapsed one way, and Armand collapsed another. I ran to them, saw the attacker wasn't dead yet, fell to my knees at his side and gave him my best hypnotic stare.

"Who sent you to kidnap this man?" I demanded.

"The ... Si ... lence," he managed, then died with a horrible gagging noise.


	3. Nous allons à une fête

III. Québec, 1680

"These rustic peasant dances are good for getting the blood flowing," Armand said, sitting next to me and fanning himself with his big plumed hat. "Must help them stay alive when they can't afford proper fuel."

I ignored the condescending tone, which I found offensive; in this time and place, it was expected of a titled person, no matter how old he was; and at least he was consenting to participate in said dances. When we entered the sugar shack for the big fete of the sort that happens around sugaring-off time in Québec, the room grew quieter as they took in the sight of an obvious nobleman, and Armand obliged them with an obvious sneer down his long Roman nose. (Armand had Rory beat in the nasal department, although now that I think about it, Rory and Armand had similar enough features to end up in a police identity parade together.)

We drank some hard cider first (after Armand was convinced they had no wine) and watched the dances, which were like square dances (only called in French), and Armand initially sneered that he didn't think he needed someone to tell him what to do while he was dancing, but he supposed it was all right for the lower orders, especially if they were too stupid with drink or just too stupid ...

"All right, that's enough," I said.

"One simply tells the truth as one sees it," Armand said, knocking back the rest of his cider.

It was the cider that probably got him to take to the floor – that and the fact that I soon got asked to promenade by a solider with a Parisian accent. Armand made faces at me during the first dance (more photos I wish I could have taken); then sat broodingly during the second one; and finally got to his feet, looked around, seized a young woman by the arm and half-dragged her to the floor as the third began. After a few turns in various reels, brandys, quadrilles and seize mains en rond, it was time to eat, and he turned up at my side. With a few curt words to my dance partner, who happened to be the same one that first got me out on the floor, he clapped my hand to his arm and escorted me to the dining table.

"Armand, I was enjoying myself," I said, and it was true. "You didn't give me a chance to make my farewells politely, even."

"He's a peasant," Armand muttered.

"He is no such thing; he's from Paris. As much a city dweller as you, maybe more so."

"He's still common as dirt."

I remembered that Armand's mother's father was an attorney – a man of great learning and repute, but probably as common as dirt in the sense of lacking noble ancestry. In the future, Armand would insist on taking precedence over one of King Louis XIII's brothers because Armand was a prince of the church, and one of his maternal relatives at court had said in awe, "Imagine a grandson of lawyer La Porte taking precedence over a grandson of Charles V!" But he would also insist in his will that the Duchy of Richelieu would only be passed down to those who had married into the nobility. So I figured it was best to change the subject.

"You learned these dances quickly," I said.

"You have to learn new dances quickly if you want to be a success at court," Armand told me, as if trying to change the subject back, then frowned a little at my blank expression. "Don't they dance at court where ... you come from?"

"Well, we don't have_ courts_," I said.

"All right, gatherings of your nobles."

I started to protest that we didn't have nobles, but that wasn't true - Time Lords were Gallifrey's ruling class; de facto most of them had inherited the status; and we had the kinds of weird get-ups and rituals that the French and English nobles had. I imagined what dancing in the Panopticon would look like and tried not to smile.

"We don't dance," I said.

"Shame," he said. "Then where did you learn?"

"Oh, here and there, you know, round and about," I said vaguely, then dropped my voice. "Ask me again when we're alone."

"Another one of those 'alien' things?"

"Yes."

He was gradually getting used to the idea that I came from another planet - and, more to the point, that I wasn't a supernatural being, and that everything I was doing had a rational, scientific explanation, even if it was considerably beyond his understanding. I was seriously worried about that. If he thought I were an angel, he might try to worship me; and if he thought I were a demon or a witch, he might try to exorcise (or just kill) me. I had never fully realized the leap of faith needed to accept that everything had a rational explanation until I had to persuade this extremely intelligent, well-educated (for his time period), rational man of fact. I had led him through the process that had improved ships, and then asked him to imagine that going on for millions of years, each generation building on the one before it. His mind was very elastic, and it was evident when he had truly understood something - the gleam in his eyes would increase by at least a couple of magnitude, and he would smile like a cat that had just devoured a particularly elusive mouse. Fortunately, it generally didn't take much effort to produce that gleam.

The meal met with Armand's condescending approval – "not bad for rustic fare" – and after having some time to digest, the dancing started up again. But he stayed at our table, by my side, folding and unfolding his napkin almost compulsively as he told me stories of some court dances he'd been to.

"Well, aren't you going to engage your partner from earlier?" I asked.

"She's as common as dirt," Armand replied. "Pretty enough and nimble enough, but that's all."

"How about her?" I asked, nodding at another young woman who looked a little higher-class.

"I don't like red hair."

"You're just going to dance, not get married," I said. "All right, the fair-haired demoiselle by the fireplace."

"Too languid," he said.

A gent started in our direction, then stopped in his tracks, bowed with a flourish of his hat to Armand, and engaged the blond. Armand had a look on his face that suggested instant death sentence to anyone who dared approach, and his hand rested lightly but meaningfully on the hilt of his rapier.

I guessed I knew what was going on – that he didn't want me to dance with someone else. Maybe he wanted me to dance with him, but wasn't feeling up to it just yet. Maybe he thought these "common" soldiers would spirit me off and do terrible things to me if I allowed them. Gallant but unnecessary. I started to ask him if he wanted to dance, but checked myself; he would be offended if I asked, and in any case, if he were too embarrassed to ask (I thought with no regard to my having been in that situation before) I was not going to help him get out of his predicament. So went past a quadrille, a breakdown a four, a reel, a p'tit chars and a carousel. Then as a dance called l'oiseau dans la cage began, he cleared his throat –

"Cherie mademoiselle, may I have this dance?"

It was the Parisian soldier, a handsome fellow named Dandurand but called Marchaterre, apparently because after a forced march of some 40 miles he said to his commander, "I thought that was going to be tiring."

"I would be delighted," I replied.

"She is a noblewoman and dances only with those of her rank," Armand said over my reply in a deadly tone.

"I suppose I'm good enough to dance with her," Dandurand shot back.

"You're not good enough to empty her chamberpot," Armand growled.

Both of them drew their swords as if on cue, glaring at each other. "And what do you intend to do about this, little boy?" Dandurand sneered.

"Teach you lessons in deportment," Armand shot back.

"Listen, gentlemen," I said, stepping between them. "Let us not have a duel. I will solve this problem here and now. I won't dance with either of you." And I sat down again, thinking I'd solved that problem rather neatly.

Dandurand mumbled an apology to me and engaged a woman who was probably the lowest ranked person in the room. Armand stormed off. After half an hour he had not returned, and I began to worry. After an hour, the sun went down, and my worrying escalated to near panic – Armand in this weather could come to a premature end …

So I found my wraps and slipped outside. I circled the sugar shack until I heard some kind of metal-on-metal noise and followed it about half a mile to a clearing, where I found Armand and Dandurand engaged in serious swordplay.

"What are you two doing?" I demanded.

"Stay back, Mademoiselle Poulain," said Dandurand, "this is how gentlemen settle a difference of opinion."

"Yes," Armand agreed. "Namely, whether one of them has the right to call himself a gentleman."

"I would have thought that you being a marquis would have answered that question," Dandurand puffed, "but if you have any doubts –"

This time I had my sonic screwdriver, and with a disgusted sigh I pulled it out of my bodice and soon had both swords flying safely away. Over their amazed protests, I shouted, "Nobody is going to shed blood over my failure to dance, for God's sake!"

"She isn't French; she doesn't understand these things," Armand said to Dandurand.

"But how –"

"Shut up, both of you," I commanded. Armand's rapier was at my feet; I picked it up. "Chevalier Dandurand, you will stand there until we are out of sight. Then you may collect your sword and – I don't care what. You won't be able to find us. Thank you for a pleasant evening, sir." And I started to frog-march Armand back to the TARDIS, but he yanked his arm away and followed about a pace behind, stomping the snow as if I were underneath his boots.

"I do not thank you," he finally said.

"I do not care," I said. "You want to get yourself killed before you turn 20?"

"Honor is more important than life," he said.

"Whatever," I said. "Just don't do it on my –"

"Sacristie!" Armand spluttered.

We turned a corner and stopped. In the distance the TARDIS stood, surrounded by soldiers bearing torches.

"I thought you said she was unnoticeable," Armand whispered.

"I thought she was," I replied. "But I'll bet you if we get any closer to those fellows we'll see they're all wearing eye patches."

"Eye patches?"

"Yeah, like that guy who came from the Silence."

"Yeah … you sure they had the right person? In the grand scheme, I'm nobody; I'm just a third son of an unimportant house. Even my brother Henri isn't that important."

I bit my lower lip. How much to tell him? "You will be," I finally said.

He looked like I'd told him he was going to win the lottery. (And considering how much money he made in his political career, maybe I had.) But before he could ply me with his probing questions, we heard Dandurand's voice: "All right, men! Is the battering ram here yet?"

"Just got here, sir," someone replied.

"Excellent." He looked around, and we saw that he had an eye patch on now. "Just remember, the Silence don't want it damaged, just opened. Line yourselves up!"

"No!" I whispered, but Armand held me back.

"There's twenty of them, and only one of you," he pointed out. "I don't think you're going to be able to pull that trick with your toy on all of them at once."

"You'd be surprised."

"And even if you do, you can't fight off all twenty of them at once."

"Well, what are we going to do then? We can't let them take the TARDIS."

He thought a moment. "Let me finish up my duel with that guttersnipe Dandurand."

"Armand, no!" I grabbed at him, but he had already leapt over our hiding berm.

"Looking for me, Dandurand?" he called. "You miserable rotting garbage heap!"

Dandurand whirled and swore at Armand, who only smiled. "Such language, even from you. Well, I'll let that pass, since milady's delicate ears won't be scorched by your expressions. Shall we see who will win? Prenez garde!"

Armand's strategy soon became evident – he was luring the soldiers away from the TARDIS entrance. When I judged the time opportune, I ran as silently as I could to the front door and jumped inside. I couldn't leave him there – I couldn't; it was far too important to history that he fulfill his destiny – but what could I do besides wait for him to come back?

Wait … I went through my files until I found the one I wanted. I ran it through the conversion program and had the old girl project the resulting hologram in the middle of the crowd.

"YOU SHOULD KILL US ALL ON SIGHT!" the Silent hissed.

Dandurand and Armand stopped their duel as the Silent told them how they had been manipulating Earth history from the beginning, then repeated that humans should kill Silents on sight. Suddenly a roar went up and the soldiers ran, and a Silent – a real one - tried to kill them with its lightning bolts, then disappeared in a cloud of snow and flashing swords. The TARDIS' front door slammed, and Armand yelled, "Get us out of here, Doctor!"

I pulled the lever and we were safe. And over the hum of the TARDIS' engines I heard Armand murmuring_: … ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen._

"I hope God doesn't make anything uglier than that," he added.

"Than what?"

"That thing that ran off just now. You saw it, didn't you?"

With considerable difficulty I had trained myself to remember encounters with the Silents – "Wait, you remember?"

"Of course I remember, it just happened, you know," Armand said dismissively.

"But but … you can't. They're memory-proof. No living mind can remember them."

"What, big grey-skinned things with no mouths and huge eyes? I remember. I've seen them before. All the time. They're all over France."


	4. Remembrance of the Silents

IV. Vortex

The fact that Armand, biologically a fairly primitive human, could remember the Silents when he wasn't looking straight at them overrode my reluctance to give him a medical examination. I found that he had several low-grade food and environmental allergies and was lactose and gluten intolerant, which explained his scrawny build. Even controlling for those factors, his immune system was weaker than it should have been, too.

As for his famous migraines, I found that they weren't migraines at all. Instead, he had a gene mutation affecting his memory centers; and when I did imaging of his brain (like your CT or MRI scans, only much better), I found the entire nerve structure of his brain was different than most people's, which an especially high concentration of nerves in his memory center. The results weren't so bad that they caused epilepsy, but there was some overload going on in there at times of stress.

While Armand lay in his quiet, darkened suite at my insistence (he had no idea whatsoever that he should take it easy during his headaches!) I roamed the halls of the TARDIS, wondering if he had just mutated accidentally, or of someone was trying to create a human who could remember them. Who might do that? The Silents themselves? It would mean they wouldn't have to depend on an eye drive, which could be hijacked. Or maybe there was some group out there that was opposing the Silents, trying to beef up humanity's defenses, or planting spies among them ...

Armand's face did sort of vaguely resemble a Silent's in its general shape ...

What if Silents were mutated humans themselves?

What if Armand were a mutated Silent? No, no, that was ridiculous ... or maybe it wasn't; I had never examined the DNA of a Silent. Or maybe I had, but it too was memory proof? No, no, no, how could body parts be memory proof?

How could a being be memory proof, anyway? I'd never quite answered that one.

I looked at my watch. It had been five hours since I'd sent Armand to bed. I headed for the nearest computer terminal and called up a report on him. The room was still dark, but he wasn't in bed - he was sitting in a chair, playing the baroque guitar I had loaned him. The body was longer and narrower than later acoustics; the neck was shorter; it had ten strings instead of six (or twelve) and it sounded a little different than the usual 21st century acoustic guitar – a bit mellower, more open-throated perhaps. He had picked it out of my musical instrument collection to compensate him for being treated like an invalid – not surprising, since it was made in the 1600s and was probably the most familiar of my guitars.

Deep in a musical trance, he didn't notice when I entered the room; his eyes were closed and his long, tapering fingers were wandering over the strings, eliciting soft notes from the ancient instrument. He seemed to be improvising, so I sat in a straight chair next to the door and listened. I had read, of course, that Richelieu had some musical ability, but the writers left one with the impression that it was just a handy accomplishment to employ at court. This, however, was the playing of someone who had the soul of a musician; he was feeling the music, not merely making it. The tune was in a minor key, which always seemed to me to express sorrow, longing, or some other sort of emotion that had to be repressed, and I wondered if it were the correct interpretation. In his future, Richelieu would experience many emotions that could not be openly expressed; but what could Armand, this man-child before me now, be feeling that could only be expressed through a guitar strings? For whatever it was, it was affecting me deeply; I felt very sorry for anyone experiencing such pain ...

Oh, of course. Silly me. It was his headache. Or perhaps his bad health in general. Or perhaps the whole prospect of being a soldier, which he could evidently excel at - if his health permitted it, which he had reason to doubt. And there were limits to being a soldier, even an aristocratic one and an officer - intellectual limits. Sure, you could expend a lot of brainpower on strategy, tactics, gathering intelligence, maintaining supply lines and whatever else crops up in the process of fighting a war, but would that be enough for Armand?

I was happy for him, because very soon in his future his next elder brother, the putative bishop of Luçon, would reject this appointment, and Armand would take it instead. He would be far better off in many ways, and he would live a reasonably long and definitely full life as a result. And now that I knew him, the prospect pleased me. Granted, I don't like some of the things he did in the course of his life, and before I knew him, I wouldn't have hesitated to say "Maybe it would have been better if he died on some battlefield somewhere," but that's hard to say about someone you know as a real living person. I couldn't even say that about Koschei (although I had once, when I was still young and callow), and Richelieu's deeds didn't rise to that level. He would have to make decisions that went against his profession (you really couldn't say vocation) as a priest; no priest should take actions that lead to the deaths of 20,000 townspeople from starvation, but Richelieu was not just a priest, but also a statesman, and when the King left during the Siege of La Rochelle, he left Richelieu in command. And soldiers have to do terrible things sometimes; I knew that all too well ...

"Is something wrong with my boots?"

I had spaced out, looking in the general direction of Armand's feet but not seeing them. "Oh, sorry, no, they're just fine." Better than fine, actually; they were beige riding boots that came up past the knee, looking like something straight out of "The Three Musketeers." (Which figures, since that novel was set during the Siege of La Rochelle …) I had covertly and covetously admired them before. But if he was wearing them, being presumably too well-bred to wear shoes in bed, he probably had never intended to rest as I had tried to make him ...

"I was just listening to your playing, and I had to point my face at something, and I didn't want to stare at your face; that would have been very rude ..."

He answered me with an ironic smile. "Sometimes I've been asked why I'm staring at someone or something, and I had no idea it was even there. Once I got slapped for looking at a woman's décolletage when in truth I didn't realize she was even there. Which is the worse insult, I ask you - staring at a beautiful woman, or not even noticing a beautiful woman?"

I laughed.

"I've not met too many people who also get so wrapped up in their thoughts that they don't see what's before their eyes," he continued, strumming a few random chords. "I didn't know you were even in here until I finished playing." He seemed to be playing inversions of the same major chord, then a mischevious smile crossed his face. "And now you can answer my question."

"Which question?"

"Is it a worse insult to stare at a beautiful woman or not notice she's there at all?"

"I wouldn't know," I said, shrugging.

"I beg to differ." He smiled again.

"Well, I did once tell a woman she was beautiful, probably."

"You probably told her she was beautiful?" Armand asked, comparing the tones of two strings, then adjusting the peg of one to raise the note a fraction. "Were you learning a new language?"

"No, I told her she was probably beautiful. All I meant was that I didn't consider myself to be qualified to judge human aesthetics. She was definitely insulted."

He made some equally minute adjustments to the tuning of the other strings. I could tell the difference in pitch, but most humans wouldn't be able to. And the changes were all improvements, so he could probably tell the difference, too. "Do you like that guitar?" I asked.

"It's a very fine instrument, well-made and beautiful as the owner is," he replied. "And I mean that without the tiniest soupçon of flattery. Who is the artisan that made such a wonder?"

"An Italian called Antonio Stradivari," I replied. "He, um, well, he hasn't been born yet in your time."

"Oh. Pity."

"He really is best known for violins. Will be. Was. But everything he makes, made, will make, is superb. I bought this one from him as a favor. He was running low on money and thinking of closing his shop."

The ironic smile again. "Not buying, bought, will buy?"

I burst out laughing. "In my personal timeline, it's definitely past tense."

He played a few bars that sounded vaguely familiar to me. "Do you play?" he asked.

"I have, but as you might guess my preferences vary over time. Right now I'm more into woodwinds."

"Will you join me? Playing alone is good for the soul, but sometimes I prefer to play in concert."

I was oddly glad to have been right about him possessing a musician's soul, but I felt constrained to say, "You're supposed to be resting, Armand."

"I'm not sick!" he said.

"You don't have a headache anymore?"

"Actually, my head's killing me."

"Then you're sick."

"No," he said. "I am in pain. I am not sick. When I can sleep during the day in spite of the pain, then I'm sick. And it would help if the lighting was better."

"It would not help your headache."

"It would help me see."

I gave up arguing over the illumination and explained to him, as simply as I could, what was wrong with his head, with a view of convincing him he should give his brain as much of a rest as he could.

"The doctors say I should have my head trepanned," he told me.

"And what did you say?"

"I didn't like the idea. Neither did my mother. She told them to drill the holes in their own heads instead."

I laughed.

"So I have myself bled instead."

"You really shouldn't do that," I said. "Blood is important. It carries nutrition and oxygen and disease fighters to all parts of the body. I don't know how many people die of minor illnesses because they get bled."

Armand shrugged. "I've heard that sort of thing before," he said. "Mostly from women."

"But you agree with your mother about being trepanned."

"Even a broken watch is right twice a day."

I leaned back, exasperated.

"But I only refer to human women," he went on. "Not to you, Mademoiselle Doctor Therese Amelie Poulin. Clearly the women of your people are far superior to ours – in appearance and in intellect."

This time, I acknowledged the compliment (just the compliment to my intelligence, which I was quite willing to agree with) with a nod of my head.

"What must your men be like!" he exclaimed.

"Actually," I said, irritated by his unthinking sexism, "not very different. I used to be one of them."

I realized how he would take what I'd said just in time to keep the Strad from turning into matchsticks on the parquet floor. Armand's eyes met mine with horror. Then, to my surprise, he started to laugh.

"My mother and my whole family used to call me Armand _le credulé_," he explained. Armand the gullible one. "But it's been a long time since anyone has actually put one over on me, intentionally or by accident. You are good, Mademoiselle Doctor. I salute you!" And he rose and bowed, sweeping an imaginary hat with exaggerated flourish.

"All right, Armand," I replied, getting up to drop an equally ironic (and far clumsier) curtsy. "But you'd better believe me here, because I'm serious. I think the Silents are after you because they've found out you can remember them. They count on everyone forgetting them as soon as they turn around. And they're ruthless. They kidnapped my best friend's newborn baby, raised her and trained her to come kill me when she grew up – and she nearly succeeded. And that's just the Silence. Who knows who else might be after you for your ability to remember them – friends or enemies of the Silence, it doesn't matter. You're as valuable a commodity in the entire universe, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, as a rival heir to a throne would be in France. So until we figure out what's going on here, you have to stay with me."


	5. Talking Head

V. 5219

And so it was that I took Armand off world. Specifically I went to a nameless place I privately called New Gallifrey because it had red grass and orange skies like home, though that's where the similarity ended. Still, it was more than enough to convince Armand that we really were somewhere other than his little world, and that all those fine stories I was telling him about the stars in the sky having their own worlds were true. But he soon became impatient, asking me pointedly if I shouldn't be trying to figure out why the Silents had suddenly gone from just watching for him to attacking him.

And, speak of the Silents, we got attacked again. We were very fortunate because the attacker was a lone Silent who must have come across us entirely by accident. But that's what got me working with a much greater sense of urgency.

Of course, there wasn't much need to work, because I knew where I needed to go and who to talk to: Dorium Maldovar, my black-marketing blue friend, beheaded by the Headless Monks but still living in the Seventh Transept, where hopefully the WiFi was still good.

With my hand tucked in the bend of his elbow, I guided Armand through the spider-webbed halls lined with shelves full of skulls of beheaded monks, skulls that still lived and followed our progress through the room with carnivorous interest. Judging by his bugging eyes, pallid skin and the low murmuring of Latin prayers and lists of saints, Armand was terrified. I had already warned him to be on his guard, and that walking into the transept was probably far more dangerous to me than him, even though the skulls would eat him alive if they got the chance. And although I'd been here before, I would have joined him in his prayers if I'd only known the words.

Finally we reached the dead end where Dorium's box rested on its pedestal, still open from the last time I had been there.

"Who's there?" he called in his deep voice, before we came into his line of vision. He looked at me, then at Armand, who was back in his 17th-century riding clothes. "Doctor? Is that you?"

"I'm over here," I said.

Dorium's eyes shifted to me, and he laughed and looked back at Armand. "Good joke, Doctor Song. Very good joke."

"I'm serious, Dorium. I'm the Doctor. Not Doctor Song. Just the Doctor."

Dorium looked hard at me, then accepted the reality. "Well, that explains why the Silence called off their search for you. They still think you're a man."

"Then it's true?" Armand murmured to me.

"I told you it was, _mon credulé_," I said, patting his arm with my free hand. "I'll explain later. Armand, this is Dorium Maldovar; Dorium, this is my_ very young_ friend, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, marquis de Chillou."

"Richelieu?" Dorium exclaimed. "_That_ Richelieu?"

I didn't have to look at Armand to sense his sharpened attention. But I did sneak a glance, and his expression told me he had forgotten all about his surroundings. Even disembodied blue heads from the 52nd century knew the name Richelieu - !

"Yes,_ that_ Richelieu," I said, hoping that Dorium still had the sense not to give the game away. But all this time, he had kept his mouth shut about the fact that I was still alive. I ought to trust him. "My very good friend, whom the Silence evidently are hunting. I need to know why."

"Because he can remember them," Dorium said.

"Yes, I know that, but I was told they want to kidnap him, not kill him. Why? And how did it come about that he can remember them?"

"That part I don't know," Dorium said promptly. "But they want to study him. They don't have any more idea why other creatures have trouble remembering them than the rest of us do."

"Really," I said. That information alone was worth risking the trip.

"Oh yes," he said. "It has its benefits, of course, but on the whole it's a big inconvenience, and they've decided it's not always worth it. They'd like to be able to have a few non-Silent operatives who can remember them organically."

"They've got eye drives," I said.

"The eye drives aren't foolproof; they can be stolen or duplicated, although they do have that other little benefit of allowing them to get rid of inconvenient people easily. But if it's that they want, they can just implant something in people's heads, I imagine. And it might help cure a birth defect among their own people. Did you know," Dorium went on expansively, "that about 1.5 percent of Silents can't remember their fellow Silents?"

"Really!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, and the incidence rate is gradually rising. It's a matter of some concern to them."

"Well, thank you, Dorium," I said, "you've been a great help, as usual."

"Always a pleasure to get actual visitors for once. I haven't seen anyone here since the last time we met, after you faked your death. But ... the Fall of the Eleventh, the Fields of Trenzelor, and the Question still await you, Doctor. How long are you going to keep -"

"Yes, I know," I said uneasily. "Must be off. Thanks very much-"

"A moment, if I might, Doctor," Armand said. "Monsieur de Maldovar, since you know who I am, would you be so kind as to tell me who the Doctor is?"

"You don't know?" Dorium asked.

Armand just gave him that ironic smile. "I'd like to check what I've put together with someone who seems to have known her a while."

Dorium looked at me, and I shrugged.

"Well, the Doctor is a Time Lord from Gallifrey, a world that doesn't exist anymore. He – or she now – is the last of the Time Lords, who were once the guardians of the integrity of Time. The Doctor spent hundreds of years as a renegade. He'd been put on trial at least three times for violating the the Laws of Time, which forbid meddling in the affairs of non-time-travellers; a crime that carries the death penalty; but he managed to escape death on all occasions, obviously. On one of those occasions he manipulated the laws of Gallifrey to buy extra time to defend himself and ended up getting elected Lord President. He fought in the Last Great Time War against the Daleks and brought it to a successful resolution by destroying both sides, thereby saving the rest of the universe. Oh, saving things: He has saved a total of 458 planets individually, including your Earth about 58 times by my count; he has saved entire solar systems, constellations, galaxies, local star groups, the entire universe at least three times in the last ten years, as far as I know, and all of creation – this universe and all the parallel universes that have ever branched off it and ever will branch off it - at least once. Of course, that kind of ability will bring you your share of enemies. The universal religion I belong to now, the Silence, was literally founded on the premise that the Doctor must die. We seem to have abandoned that – for now."

Armand, at the end of that recitation, looked as much like a boy as I would ever see him. His mouth hung open and his eyes were at least as big as his mouth. But when he realized I was looking at him, he did a pretty decent job of affecting boredom again.

"How old is he, or she, to have accomplished so much?" he asked offhandedly.

"Last I heard, he was about eleven hundred years old," Dorium said. "It's hard to tell with time travelers. You'll learn that soon enough, Car—"

"I'm eighteen hundred and forty-six now," I said quickly. "Subjectively, of course."

"And you haven't asked yet, but Time Lords regenerate," Dorium said. "When their bodies wear out, they renew them. Different faces, different bodies, different personalities. Last time I saw the Doctor, she looked not too much unlike you, Monsieur de Richelieu."

"I use the title Marquis de Chillou," Armand said haughtily.

"If you prefer," Dorium said. "But I thought you were a du— Oh," he said as he caught my glare. "And if you were wondering, a Time Lord who switches genders is as much their apparent sex as if they had been born that way. Never fear! I knew one called the Corsair once who –"

"Really, Dorium, we must be off. Thank you very much for your time and information." And I led Armand out of the Transept and into the TARDIS.

"Mille diable!" Armand said, slumping down in the jump seat, taking his hat off and putting it on his knee. "You consort with some strange people."

"Information can be found in some very strange places," I told him, thinking about the strange people he would consort with for France's sake as I dematerialized us. I expected him to ask questions about what Dorium had said, but he was looking sleepy.

"Well," Armand yawned, "I think I'm due for a nap. If I'm not awake in an two hours, come wake me, will you, cherie?"

"Of course," I said.

He stood up, bowed and swept his hat in the old French style, looking up at me with his ironic smile – almost as if he were the Mona Lisa's son. Then he rose, pulled me into his arms and kissed me slowly and thoroughly. I ran my fingers up his narrow, bony back, clutched his broad but scrawny shoulders, and caressed his wavy hair; his youth's mustache tickled my face. He searched my eyes for a moment. "But after I've rested, I do intend to question you very, very closely, madame, about everything Monsieur de Mandovar told me." He stepped back, bowed again and left.

I took several deep breaths and shook my head, half inclined to follow him. Instead, I opened a hatch on the control console to do some necessary maintenance.

When I told Armand he couldn't leave, a week ago now, I had expected him to put up a big fuss. Of course now, I see I shouldn't have been surprised that he acquiesced so readily. Most of my companions didn't want to leave, no matter how much they suffered and lost in their travels with me. I've never truly understood why.

Of course, I now a lot of other things about Armand I didn't see at first, as I suspect you have. You're probably laughing at me for being a purblind fool. I've been through a lot, and I've loosened up tremendously since I first left Gallifrey, but the human capacity to flirt in the most inappropriate situations never ceases to amaze me. You might think after River I could detect such things, but River was far more overt, 52nd century, British; and besides I was a man then. The kind of flattery laid on me as a female by a court-trained 17th-century French man-child was formulaic enough to be difficult to take as expressing any kind of real interest. Besides, he was 18; I was 1,800-plus. It never occurred to me he might really see something in me.

Armand was disciplined, intelligent, schooled in his faith and in chivalry; but he was also very emotional, passionate, impatient and hated not being in control of a situation. In a few years, at 22, he would seek a dispensation from the Pope to get officially consecrated as bishop even though he was five years too young; when the Vatican bureaucracy got the request stuck in itself, Armand would travel to Rome, badger his way into an audience with the Pope, convince him to expedite matters and make a very favorable impression on him. For now, when he realized that I wasn't getting the hints he was dropping my way, well, he wasn't the sort to do nothing.

Which is why, when I tried to take my leave of Armand after our jam session - he on the Strad guitar, I on the recorder I hadn't picked up since my second incarnation - he grabbed me by the arms, shoved me up against the door and kissed me hard.

When you get to be my age, events start repeating themselves, and my first thought was that this was an awful lot like something Amy had done once. Then I couldn't make up my mind whether I liked Armand's kisses or not, like the first/last time River kissed me in Stormcage. I thought I should push him away, but I pulled him against me instead. …

No, we didn't do _that,_ but we came close. And we hadn't done that in the days following, but he was more and more difficult for me to resist.

My maintenance work was involved, and it was three and a half hours before I remembered that Armand had asked me to wake him in two. Instead of paging him over the intercom, I decided to go to his quarters and wake him in person. He was cute when he was just waking up ...

But he wasn't in his quarters. The bed was rumpled but unoccupied; his hat, cloak and gloves were neatly arranged where he usually kept them. I frowned, wondering where he might have been, then a thought hit me - _that Richelieu? -_ and I scampered to the library and down the rows of shelves until I got to where I kept my Earth/French History/Renaissance Era collection. And there he was, poring over a thick book with the word RICHELIEU covering the entire spine. I literally kicked myself for not having sealed off that entire section - but I'd never had an actual historic figure on the ship before ... I hadn't even brought Elizabeth on the ship, though I would have if I'd not gotten cold feet when it was time to elope.

I snatched the book out of his hands.

"Hey!"

"How much of this did you read?" I demanded, looking at the pages he had open. With considerable relief I saw he was at the beginning, with a recitation of the ancestors of the du Plessis de Richelieu family.

"Just a bit of the first chapter," he said.

That was good to hear. I sighed.

"And the preface."

I turned to the preface, almost ripping some pages in my haste. To my horror, it had a resume of Armand's future career. I had a brief, wild hope that he'd managed to skip that somehow, or failed to understand its significance; but Armand was too thorough, too focused to make that kind of mistake. Even I wouldn't make that kind of mistake if I were reading something of such definite interest to me. From the look on his face, he knew. Gods, he knew, and was feeling about the same way any ambitious youth might to be told that he would be the most powerful man in his country, save for the King. Now he knew why even blue heads from the 52nd century recognized the name Richelieu.

"I wonder why I didn't just make myself King and get it over with," he said. "Or Pope."

"You're not supposed to know this," I snapped.

"Why not?"

"Foreknowledge is very dangerous. It can keep a thing from happening. You can get lazy, miss opportunities, think it's all foreordained, and it isn't. Or, in your case, you're likely to get arrogant and overplay your hand and get killed. I'm afraid I'll have to erase this from your memory -"

Armand didn't like the sound of that, I guess. He ran. I chased him. He didn't have a chance, of course; I was still a Time Lord, with reflexes and speed superior to those of nearly all humans. And I was wearing running shoes, while he was wearing boots with French heels. No chance at all. Still, he got to the corridor before I grabbed him –

I found myself with a dagger at my throat. Armand's dark eyes burned like coals. I took hold of his wrist, careful not to apply my full strength; I didn't want to hurt him or make him afraid of me.

"I know you don't have it in you to kill me," I said evenly. Perhaps when he was older, he would have been able to bring himself to do it – and then hated himself for the rest of his life, even if he felt he must for reasons of state.

He closed his eyes, lowered the dagger and leaned his forehead against mine – which, the poor wretch had no idea, is exactly what I needed him to do. The adjustment took a nanosecond or two. He only lost five minutes, max – he wouldn't remember even going into the library; he would think he had been surprised at the entrance.

"When did you get here?" he asked.

"Oh, I went looking for you and you weren't in your room ... what are you looking for? French history? I've got a primary source you might like - Gesta Normannorum Ducum. The original chronicle, written by William of Jumièges himself, before William the Conqueror got him to revise it. Think your Latin is up to it?"

"I think I'm up to a few other things," he murmured, putting his arms around me. I let him take me back to his room, where we had another inconclusive but exciting encounter. I have done far worse things to distract someone from something he shouldn't be doing.

I suppose I could be accused of leading Armand on. I knew damn well we didn't have a future, and I would have known even if I hadn't read several biographies and histories of France. I don't mean we were incompatible. I mean we did not have a future. Not one that I wanted to be responsible for.

We Time Lords can see events as humans do, but when we need to, we can also see different possibilities - if you go left instead of right, if you say no instead of yes, Door No. 1 instead of Door No. 2 - what might happen. It's like having read thousands and thousands of speculative fiction novels, about everything. Only worse.

In most of the futures I looked at where we stayed together, we were very happy with each other. It's just that too many other people would suffer as a result of our union. In many of the scenarios that resulted from Armand abandoning France, Marie de Medicis, the mother of King Louis XIII and his regent until he turned 18, essentially set the country back 200 years in her lifetime, starting an avalanche of events that led to Nazi Germany conquering all of the Eurasian landmass in the 1940s, and America, in a last desperate gasp, nuked Berlin; Germany nuked back. Instead of going to the moon and then into space, the remnants of the human population devolved into illiterate cave dwellers, then gradually petered out – they ended up not unlike the Futurekind on Malcassario, only about 99.9999 trillion years too early. And more still: The absence of a technologically advanced Earth led to a Dalek-Cybermen-Androgum-Master alliance that overran the galaxy by the 38th century, then devolved into civil war. And that's about as far as I cared to follow that chain of events.

On the other hand, if I stayed in France with Armand, there were two main branchings of events. In one, Armand died early as a soldier, either from his poor health or from a battle wound, it didn't matter which. That scenario then followed, more or less, the same pattern as the one where Armand left Earth with me.

In the other, Armand survived his military service long enough to get into court as an adviser to the King, and the resulting scenarios mostly followed the events of what I considered the prime universe - where he became an adviser to the King, then a member of the Royal Council, and finally the King's first minister. But with me advising him, my influence checking his sarcastic tongue (and in many cases, my intervention heading off his health crises at the pass) and heirs of his body adding to his personal ambition, he became a beloved instead of despised figure in France. In this scenario, Gaston d'Orleans and his brother, Louis XIII, killed each other in a duel; and in the chaos that followed Armand seized control and set himself up as either King or Emperor of France. His reign lasted until he was assassinated about the same year that he would have died anyway. But where at the time of his death in the Prime Universe he had left France a stronger place, in this alternate reality his death plunged Europe into a second Dark Ages instead of a further Enlightenment. And well, after that I didn't care to look any further.

But in the days after I concluded that there wasn't a way – at the moment, anyway – I kept hunting for alternatives, picking up threads of my appearing further down the line and either insinuating myself into his life or taking him out of his "official" existence. I had no luck, and I was beginning to feel a gnawing in my gut that was desperation.

Really, the kindest thing to do would have been to call an end to the physical encounters, but I was extremely attracted to Armand. It's that simple. Now if you were to look him up in Google Images, say, you would not understand why. All the available portraits of him from life done by de Champagne and other painters and sculptors of that highest caliber were painted when he was in his 50s, very ill, very tired and wearing the perfected mask of dignity. Everything else I've seen is either not done from life or isn't very good.

Although perhaps de Champagne et al would have missed the essence of his sexual appeal, being men. The closest any artist has come to portraying that quality was Henri Motte, who produced a painting of the Siege of La Rochelle about 250 years after the fact. It showed Armand standing on a sea wall, watching the battle. He is wearing, in addition to his cardinal's robes, a cuirass, a rapier and a pair of ridding boots, the boots exposed because he had unbuttoned the skirt of his robe and tucked it into the sword belt to keep it out of the way. Oh, those boots! But one problem with this painting was that Motte gave Armand the body he wished he had – the body of a healthy soldier, not that of a sickly cleric. I don't think Armand ever weighed more than 145 pounds, and at La Rochelle he was actually down to 130 because he was so busy he was forgetting to eat. I scanned him with my sonic, that's how I know. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have given Armand's appeal to me a lot of thought, because I knew I'd have to explain it someday. It was not his looks. Power does make the ugliest man attractive, but when I met him the only power Armand had was in his personality. I'll admit that was already formidable, but I wasn't human, either; no human has ever intimidated me. But everything he said and did expressed, simultaneously, extreme intelligence and great, refined, but powerful virility of an almost Time Lordly sort – if a Time Lord were to be sexy, he would do it that way. Even at eighteen, Armand had that quality. He was not, I repeat, not attempting to be sexually magnetic; he just was.

I understood now why I had been almost mesmerized by him the first time I saw him, why I had been unable – or unwilling – to stop him from kissing me after Quebec, though I had stopped him from taking things to their natural conclusion. I wanted to take them to that conclusion, though. He was experienced, and he knew where and how to touch me, and understood the difference between no-not-yet and no-never, but technique alone will not make up for what humans call chemistry. Chemistry, however, will almost always override a lack of skill. Trust me on this one. There was chemistry between us, even beyond that particular charisma called sexiness that he possessed. Even though there was that big, soft, silk-sheeted bed only ten feet away from the door, the first time he kissed me, we ended up on the floor instead for at least four hours, just making out like a pair of teenagers. (At least he had an excuse: he was one.) He got into my blood like a fine Argamac and spread through every cell in my body. And … well, it was clearly mutual. The way he followed me with his eyes would have been evidence enough, now that I understood it.

I felt guilty after our first encounter, and for the same reasons I cited when I refused Amy – Armand would get older, I would just change; or maybe I wouldn't this time, but either way I could reasonably expect to outlive him by several hundred years. I wasn't keen on being a widow(er) again. And of course we didn't have a future. But I couldn't tell Armand the consequences of a life together, not without giving it away.

We avoided each other for a day and a half, met to discuss what was happening next, and ended up wrapped up in each other again, this time on a big leather couch. And after that, well, I told myself maybe this fling was a fixed point.

Right. I don't believe it either.


	6. Going Back

VI. Denouement

All the two subjective weeks I just made sound like a constant round of oh-yes-yes-yes-oh-no-no-no had a lot more to them than that. We talked a lot, sharing our childhood stories. We ate. We looked at my art collection. We played music. We watched a holographic recording of the first performance of Oedipus Rex. Yes, the first ever performance in 430 BC or whatever it was. We also were dodging the Silents' attack forces and trying to find their main hiding place. Demons' Run was wrecked from the last time I had butted heads with them, but they had to be around somewhere.

And I was busy in the lab when I wasn't trying to pilot the TARDIS away from Silents and their allies.

The lab was right off the control room, and I could keep an eye on Armand, who was keeping an eye on the time column and the various displays. He had learned quickly – no surprise by now – but he was still from the 17th Century. I knew from dealings with others from pre-industrial socieities that they could make some strange assumptions about machinery …

Armand frowned and peered at a display, then flipped a few switches. I glanced at my repeater display; he had corrected our course correctly. Had I taught him how to do that? No, I hadn't. A ship might be a ship, as that one captain had said, but Armand hadn't been taught how to sail one …

The repeater next brought up a bit of information I had been waiting for, but hoped I wouldn't get for another few days.

"Cherie?" Armand called. "We seem to have found their homeworld."

"Yes," I replied, looking at the blips indicating their ships coming to meet us. "And they know we're here."

We were frog-marched into a room where a group of them, dressed in black robes, were sitting at a conference table.

"What is this, a tribunal?" Armand demanded. "You have no right to hold me; I am a French –"

"You will not speak, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu," commanded the Silent at the head of the table, raising one finger.

Armand shrugged and pulled at his gloves.

"I will speak, then," I said.

"You are a fool, Doctor," hissed the ugly. "A fool to try to evade us. A fool to ally yourself with this boy."

"And you are fools to think you can hold me without consequences," I said, holding up my sonic screwdriver. "That little disorder cropping up among your children – the ones who can't remember you? If you do not accede to my terms, I will make it so that every one of you suffers from it. Yes, how will you ever manage to run a society if you can't remember each other when you turn your backs?"

"You lie!" hissed the chief Silent.

"That is Rule 1," I agreed. "The Doctor lies. But you admit I can do it."

"Yes."

"Is that a chance you want to take?"

The Silents looked at each other. "Name your terms," the chief finally said.

"One: You stop trying to kill me. Two: You stop hunting Richelieu. Three: I continue to pretend to be dead."

"Deal."

"Thank you."

I half expected them to try something as we left, but they didn't. Still, it wasn't until I dropped out of the Vortex to refuel that Armand spoke.

"Brilliant bluff, cherie."

"Thank you," I said.

"They didn't believe you any more than I did."

"Oh, they should believe me," I said lightly. "I had found a way to spread that little disorder. I just had to let it finish compiling."

Armand had no idea what that meant, but covered up well. "I congratulate you, then. Now what does this mean for me? How long until they start coming after me again?"

"I really don't know, but you're right to assume they will," I replied. "They do not give up easily. I will, however, be checking up on you from time to time."

"What does that mean?"

I pulled the demat lever. No use delaying this. "I'm taking you back home, Armand. You have a long and distinguished life ahead of you, and it's time you got back to living it."

Armand shoved the lever back. "I'm not going," he said.

"Armand, don't be stupid," I snapped.

"Don't be stupid?" he echoed calmly. "I must have missed something somewhere. I thought … well, I thought you, me, we …"

"No, you're correct about that," I replied, not looking at him and pulling the lever again. "But it can't be."

"Why not?" He was still calm, curious.

"When we met, you were in Poitou because you were about to see your brother Alphonse installed as bishop of Luçon, right?"

"I never told you that, but yes."

"Well, Alphonse doesn't want to be bishop of Luçon or anywhere else."

"I know that," Armand said. "He's told me over and over until my head's ready to explode. He's been saying that ever since he got nominated for it, seven years ago. But he's a Richelieu. He knows his duty."

"And so do you," I said.

Armand stood even straighter. "I do."

"So supposing Alphonse finds a way to not become bishop of Luçon, what do you suppose will happen?"

"Someone else … No. Not me."

I nodded. "You."

"But if I do that, I won't be able to – no. No, I won't do it."

"Armand, you have to."

"I'm not even – I'm a soldier. I'm profane, I'm venal, I'm materialistic – I'd never make a good churchman!"

"That doesn't make a bit of difference in your day and age," I chuckled.

"I'm not doing it."

"Terrible things will happen if you don't, Armand. You have no idea. People will suffer –"

"Life is suffering for the glory of God," Armand said as if quoting something.

"More than they would if you just do what you have to! You … the lives and happiness of millions, billions of people depend on you becoming bishop of Luçon!"

"I can't be bishop if I'm already married, can I?" he asked, with a lopsided smirk and a gleam in his eyes.

"These things can be –"

"Alphonse, I don't know what he's got up his sleeve, but he can be made to fulfill his commitment if I have to force him to the altar at the point of my sword! How could he do this to our mother? She needs that money!"

"He can, and he will. But you can't."

Armand was on his knees in front of me. "Marry me."

"_What?"_

"Marry me! You do know what marriage is, don't you?"

"Yes, but I can't marry you!"

"Are you married already?"

"No, but I have been … Armand, I'm a hundred times your age! Doesn't that bother you?"

"Obviously not," he replied. He sprang up and seized me in his arms. "You know I love you. And I know you love me."

"Yes, I do –"

"Then why not? Otherwise I'll have to marry someone for the sake of the family –"

"You're not marrying anyone, Armand, including me. You're going into the Church. It's not a matter for debate!"

I broke away from him. He paced the console room like a caged animal, his eyes wild, his face red.

"Armand, it's … impossible. Listen." Without giving away specifics, I told him what would happen if he did not become bishop of Luçon.

"That is … impossible," he said softly, "yet I cannot disbelieve you. I have seen too many impossible things lately to think I know what's possible and what isn't. But, cherie, you're taking this too well for my liking!"

"I've had time to become reconciled to it," I said quietly. "And to be sure I've not missed anything. If it were possible, I –" I choked up and turned away; then I was being turned and held, not forcefully, but with great tenderness, and his head bowed over mine. A stifled sob escaped him, and I lost my control entirely, and he lost his.

I hated myself; it was one thing to think, in the abstract, that what we had done could only end badly; it was another to witness it. He was sobbing so hard it seemed he would shake himself to pieces, and I wasn't doing too much better – I lost my sense of time passing, and so I don't know how long it was before he pulled himself together enough to say something coherent to me.

"Do I have to go back … _now_?"

I shook my head, hiding my face in his shoulder. He slid a finger under my chin and tipped it up.

"Then … before I cannot …" He trailed off, but I knew what he was going to ask me. And I agreed to it, silently, looking down. He put his arm around my shoulders and we left the console room, walking slowly, submitting to one inevitability and delaying another.

I couldn't continue telling Koschei the story; I was thinking of when Armand and I finally parted, both of us trying to be brave and failing miserably. He was finally the one to accede to it, turning his back abruptly and walking out the open front door and into the forest, toward the hard, lonely life he did not want.

Koschei looked at the coffin. "And that's the last time you saw him," he concluded.

"No, it isn't," I said. "And I knew it wouldn't be, and so did he."

"Why?"

"Because the Silents lie as much as I do."


	7. The Day of the Dupes

VII. The Day of the Dupes: November 10-12, 1630

I knew that for me it would only be a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks, before I saw him again. But for him, it would be years.

How many? I wasn't sure. I went to the library and picked out the same biography that I had caught Armand reading – the definitive biography of Richelieu, at least until future historians learned of my involvement with him – and turned to where he learned he had to become bishop of Luçon. My eyes fell on a passage where a relative wrote him a consoling letter, and Armand replied with one that said, essentially, that it wasn't so bad, really it wasn't. He'd had plenty of time to get used to it, I thought.

I knew Armand, as first minister to Louis XIII, had been hated by the nobles whose power he was trying to curb in his attempt to make the king's power absolute. But still, the number of conspiracies against him was remarkable – it seemed that there were always people out to kill him, occasionally two or three groups at once. The biographer noted that Armand made himself several unnecessary enemies by virtue of his sarcastic remarks. I wondered, though, if that was enough to cause all this.

In the meantime, I had a list of events where I wanted to look in on him. I sat in the back of the congregation at his brother Henri's funeral - the fine-looking lad I had briefly met got himself killed in a particularly pointless duel. In his purple bishop's robes Armand said the funeral Mass himself. His voice was different than I remembered it; deeper, full of pain; and it cracked while giving the sermon. He only kept himself from breaking down entirely with a very obvious effort of will, closing his eyes, inhaling sharply and clutching the sides of the pulpit for a moment. His sisters and some other women in the congregation could be heard sobbing; some of the men in the church wiped their eyes openly; and I bowed my head, glad that I was hiding behind thick black veils. Armand passed me during the closing procession, and I glanced up at him and saw tears on his face. For a wild moment I wanted to jump up and comfort him in my arms; then I thought about arranging a quiet meeting; but in the end I stayed in the pew, ostensibly praying, until everyone else had left. I don't believe in God, not the way they do on Earth, but I lit two candles, one for Henri and one for Armand, and hoped that if there was Somebody or Somebodies listening that they would bring them both peace, before leaving the church and that time.

I also was in the crowd at the Estates-General when Armand, still only 28, gave an impressive speech to the King on behalf of the clergy of France. It was the beginning of his political career. I checked up on him when he became a member of the royal council, again when he became the King's first minister, and again when he was invested as a cardinal. And then I began to look into the various conspiracies forming against him.

A fellow named Henri de Talleyrand, Comte de Chalais, was one of the first to try to get Armand out of the way. and I managed to worm my way into this cabal by making myself a lady in waiting to his mistress, Marie de Rohan, Duchesse of Chevreuse, who was egging her lover on. Being a lady in waiting to a person who wasn't much of a lady was disheartening, but I had to do it. Eventually I was invited to a meeting, at which, along with the usual assortment of discontented nobility there was a monk wearing his cowl over his head, seated next to Mme. de Chevreuse. I stayed quiet and unobtrusive as they talked about either poisoning Armand or ambushing him in a forest and stabbing him to death. The monk didn't say anything, but I felt my skin crawling at his presence.

After the meeting, I said to Mme. de Chevreuse that the monk gave me the creeps. She said, "What monk?" And no, it wasn't in a way that people use when they know and you know someone was there but want it denied – she really didn't remember him.

I didn't say anything else.

At the next meeting, I surreptitiously used my ultrasonic screwdriver – a model that I could use without giving away the fact, as long as I hid it – and it confirmed my suspicions: The monk was a Silent.

I wasn't sure what to do about him, but at some point he seems to have realized who I was. I don't think it was the ultrasonic, but who knows? A few weeks after I found him out, he attacked me in a deserted hallway of the chateau, and I had no other option but to use my stiletto on him. I left it buried in his heart and disappeared, certain that the conspiracy would unravel now – and it did, with everyone pointing their fingers at everyone else.

There was at least one of these monks in every conspiracy against Armand. So it was up to me to sabotage them all. Although I had apparently managed to hide myself from that one Silent until using my sonic screwdriver, I couldn't risk that again. But because I had the biographies and other documents, I didn't even have to infiltrate these groups; I just made sure the right information got into the right hands, whether I had to place it there myself or just see to it that the people who were passing along the information got where they needed to go.

Many times the information was going to Armand's adviser and confessor, a priest called Pere Joseph. I met him during the Siege of La Rochelle, when the Rochelais – again, prompted by the Silence - decided to make an attempt on him. Getting in to see Pere Joseph was surprisingly easy, especially considering I didn't give a name. He looked up at me with a degree of skepticism that quickly faded as I spoke.

"They've discovered where the Cardinal is living," I told the gray-robed man, "and they're going to try to kill him. I'm not sure when."

He quizzed me for a good half hour before he was satisfied that I wasn't mistaken, and then he handed me a small canvas bag full of clinking metal, which I handed back, saying, "Have masses said for the soul of the Cardinal instead."

"Do you dare think he needs it?" Pere Joseph said.

"Hmph. I _know_ he does." Not that I believed that by having masses said his sins would be forgiven, but I felt the gesture would comfort him.

Pere Joseph frowned, then leaned close. "Are you … the one they call the Doctor?"

I started. "Yes, yes, I am. He told you about me …?"

"I'm his confessor. I know everything there is to know," Pere Joseph said, and I raised my eyebrows. "I am under orders to immediately receive any woman who comes here looking like the Queen, speaking perfect French, and lacking proper womanly reserve. Not only does that fit you perfectly, you seem to lack proper fear of him. Now I understand why my master speaks so highly and frequently of you."

I looked at the floor.

"And why he still loves you," the priest added quietly.

The floor was very, very interesting, the way the stones fit together. To be honest, it had never occurred to me that Armand might still feel that way about me, after all this time. It had been a good 23 years for him. I wondered if Pere Joseph really did know that or if he were just fishing, but I couldn't keep the tears out of my eyes. And then I wondered _exactly_ what he might be trying to find out by dropping that bit of information.

"Doesn't … doesn't that … I mean, he is a priest, I know the vows they take." I didn't point out that Armand had been exempted from the one about poverty, as well as a requirement that he spend an hour a day reading a certain book – both because of the demands of his secular work. "Isn't there something … wrong with that?"

"It drives him," Pere Joseph said. "Depending on when you ask him, he either wants to impress you or show you up with what he's doing here. Is it true," he went on, "that you know the Cardinal's fate?"

"I'm not going to answer that," I said bluntly.

"Have no fear - if I had you charged with sorcery I think the Cardinal would behead me himself."

I still refused to answer, and Pere Joseph sighed. "As you wish, Madame Doctor. Obviously the Cardinal's time is extremely valuable," Pere Joseph continued, rising, "but I'm sure he'll be more than happy to give you a private audience. Especially since you're, ah, very efficient with your use of time."

I wondered just how private that audience would have been, if Pere Joseph was trying to entrap his master … ? Had the Silents gotten to him? Much as I longed to see Armand, I decided not to take the chance.

"No, no … don't tell him I've been here. I'm … I'm interfering too much as it is."

He didn't know what I meant, but he didn't press the issue. We took leave of each other, and he walked me outside. We were at the Cardinal's temporary residence, and from the entrance we could see the actual siege: the French fleet facing the British armada, the siege line, the sea wall, and a red-cloaked, high-booted figure wearing a cuirass and black clothes under it restlessly pacing the sea wall. I watched him as his hair and cloak blew in the wind, occasionally exposing the rapier at his side. At this distance he looked magnificent, defiant, happy even, and most of all very healthy.

"Are you sure you don't wish an audience?" Pere Joseph asked me.

"I want one very much," I said, "but it isn't time yet. Please, be kind to him, don't tell him I was here."

The priest's eyes bored into mine, then he left me. I watched Armand watching the battle a while longer, then headed back to where I had hidden the old girl and left 1627 behind.

She materialized in a hallway of a palace, in invisible mode. The chronometer told me the date and time, and I knew why we were here. I got into a court gown and opened the door – and almost immediately shut it behind a tall, thin man dressed in red robes, with a broad starched white collar and a medal hanging from a blue ribbon around his neck. It had happened so fast that Armand had no time to shout before he was inside.

"Mother of God!" he breathed.

"No, not quite," I said, still holding his arm. "Just me."

His large eyes grew larger, and I studied him. A few silver threads mixed with his jet-black hair; he wore a ridiculous upswept mustache and a narrow, pointed beard, both of which also showed some gray. He looked tired, overworked; dark circles under his eyes; lines in his forehead and crow's-feet at his eyes; his cheeks more sunken than ever; the slightest droop to his shoulders.

The silence lengthened between us, and I really didn't know what to say to him now. He ran a badly shaking hand through his hair and studied me. I raised my eyebrows, tilted my head and gave him a wry smile.

Then he pulled me into his arms, burying his face in my shoulder. I held onto him, stroking his hair and murmuring random comforting platitudes as he shook and stained my silk fichu with his tears. I led him into the lounge, sat us on the oxblood leather sofa that we had frequently occupied before, and waited for him to calm himself.

"I'm finished," he said at last. "It's all over. My career. My freedom. Maybe my life."

"What happened?" I asked, though I knew it well. And Armand's summary was reasonably objective: Marie de Medicis had convinced Louis the King to get rid of Armand on the pretext that he had blown the treasury on an unsuccessful war in Italy, which happened to be the Queen Mother's native country. I expected the summary to end there and began to construct a pep talk, but Armand kept talking.

"People … they think I'm the one who rules this country, but if the King says jump, I say how high," Armand said. "I serve at his pleasure. It's always been that way and always will be. But how my enemies will love it to hear the King no longer finds pleasure in my service. They're always whispering, always conspiring … one way or another it's over, I should be glad of that, Doctor; I can have some peace, whether the King spares my life or not … I can't take this anymore, I can't, I can't!"

If he sounded a little incoherent, I couldn't blame him. The abyss was staring into him, or so he thought.

"It isn't over yet," I said, holding him tighter. "Who could the King possibly replace you with? Surely he knows how important you are to his realm."

"Does he?" Armand asked bitterly. "He listens to that mother of his, who's about as reliable as a whirlwind, and less sound of judgment. And others, whispering, whispering, whispering, always whispering … They say I've slept with his wife – if they're not saying I _want_ to sleep with his wife. All because I was staring at her because she looks so much like you."

I've looked at paintings of Anne of Austria, and she does resemble me in this incarnation.

"And if they're not saying that, they're saying I'm sleeping with my niece. Or all my nieces. Or any random woman who strikes their fancy. I suppose I should be glad they don't say I know my cats carnally. Or Pere Joseph! Pere Joseph! He told me you were at La Rochelle – why didn't you come see me? I needed you … I knew you wouldn't approve of what I was doing, but I needed your guidance … it just dragged on and on and on, and the Rochelais … at the end, the ones who lived, walking skeletons, it was horrible … and the corpses in the streets and the people eating shoe leather and paper and clothing and maybe each other, nobody admits it but I wouldn't be surprised … I've needed you so many times, Doctor, so much … I wasn't meant to do this alone … I wasn't meant to go through this wretched life sleeping in a cold bed –"

"I'm here now," I murmured, hoping to focus him on the present. In all honesty I was beginning to fear that he had completely cracked from the stress. "I'm here. Hold on, Armand. I'm here."

He cried at that, but at least the outpouring of words stopped. It seemed a sign that he was regaining control of himself, releasing the stress without losing his grasp of reality. I left him once to send the TARDIS into the Vortex and to get him some handkerchiefs. Then I waited out the deluge.

"I'm sorry," he said at last, blowing his nose. "This has probably been the worst day of my life. So far. I haven't been able to eat or sleep for days, because I knew this was coming."

He was still shaking, and now I wondered if that was a result of not eating. He needed food and rest, but was too wound up to rest – that was plain.

"Do you think you can eat now?"

He shrugged. "I'll try," he muttered.

Armand emptied two large bowls of leek-and-potato soup (Julia Child's recipe), inhaled about half a baguette smothered with plenty of butter and drank three glasses of white wine. (It was a California chardonnay. I never told him that California wines would one day rival French wines. He wouldn't have liked to hear that.) Then I led him to his bedroom.

"It's still here!" he marveled.

"Well, I haven't had time to archive it," I said.

"Oh no, of course not, it's only been twenty-seven years," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling off his skullcap and his Order of the Holy Ghost.

"Well, um, Armand, it's been twenty-seven years for you, but for me it's only been three months."

"That's still plenty of time –"

"I've been busy figuring out why everyone wants to kill you!" I snapped. "That's why I talked to Pere Joseph, and that's –"

He held his hands up, one still holding that enormous white collar. "Don't pay attention to me; I'm not quite myself."

"Don't worry," I said. "Rest. It'll work out. Really. I promise you. Sleep as long as you can. Call me if you need anything."

"I need you to stay with me."

"Armand—"

"Please." He looked up at me in silent entreaty. I finally nodded and turned to the bureau where my 17th-century-style nightgowns were still folded neatly and lay all facing the same direction. Armand found his own nightclothes where he had left them and went off to the en suite bath to finish getting undressed. I changed where I was standing, left my clothes in a disorderly pile on a chair, crawled under the covers, blew out the candles and waited. In the darkness, he snuggled up to me, head on my shoulder, and was asleep almost immediately – gratefully asleep in a way only someone truly convinced he finally safe can be.

I simply enjoyed being with him, listening to his breathing, stroking his hair and feeling the warmth of his body through our nightclothes and thinking about the first time we had spent the night together, after convincing him we really didn't have a future together. He had had about as much finesse as the average 18-year-old human male, but I found it exhilarating instead of insulting; and afterward, he fell asleep with his head on my shoulder, much as he was now. …

I eventually fell into a doze, not quite awake, but aware of Armand's presence, both physical and mental. I remembered reading that he usually slept only four or five hours a night, in two stretches, and thought that wasn't enough for someone whose health was as bad as his. Humans so badly need their sleep. When I woke again, he was still unconscious, facing away from me; I spooned him and reviewed several histories of this particular time, all of which I had memorized while reading. A couple of hours later, he turned and wound his arms tightly around me, but slept on. Somehow there is no more honest a gesture than one made in sleep.

When he finally woke up ("Fifteen hours?" he exclaimed after I told him), he was feeling much more reasonable, though still pessimistic about the future.

"I'm going to leave France," he told me in the console room. "I'm going to Le Havre and then … I don't know where I'm going." He was fully dressed, medal and all, pulling nervously on his red kid gloves. I waited for him to ask to come with me, but he wasn't thinking in that direction. "Maybe Spain. Maybe England. I don't know. Maybe the New World. I'd like to see it again. Or have I seen it yet?"

I smiled at the attempt at a joke. "You won't have to leave," I told him.

"No, I suppose I can wait meekly for the headsman's axe to fall on my neck," he shot back, then turned his back on me. "Is that what your precious history has waiting for me? And you'll stand by –"

"_Armand."_

He turned and stared at me.

"In my 'precious history' books, they call this the Day of the Dupes. Does that tell you anything?"

He thought it over. "Not the Fall of Richelieu?"

"No."

He raised his eyebrows and gave me his Mona Lisa smile. "Dupes, plural?"

"Dupes, plural."

He laughed and shook his head. "I want to believe you, but you weren't in that room with the Queen Mother and the King. She would have killed me there if she could have, and he would have stood there and watched."

"Believe it," I said. He would have a few more anxious hours, then a summons would come from the King, and the King would express full confidence in him. His mother and those around her would be left looking like fools. After that, he would still have a few more months before Marie de Medicis was permanently exiled from court, but after that, he would be safe, at least as far as the King was concerned.

I reached for the lever to rematerialize us – but he caught my wrist.

"Not yet," he murmured, leaning close, his dark eyes slowly closing as he pulled me into his arms. "Not yet."


	8. A Difference of Opinion

VIII. Difference of opinion

After that, I had one more conspiracy to thwart – one led by the King's favorite, the Marquis de Cinq-Mars. But Armand had to take care of himself that time, because my TARDIS had other ideas.

I materalized on a winter's day in Paris outside the Palais-Cardinal, what would later be known as the Palais-Royal. Pere Joseph was dead, but I figured there would be someone in Armand's household who would know about me – and to my surprise it ended up being Armand's favorite niece, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, the same niece Armand's enemies liked to claim he kept as his mistress, mainly because she lived in his house after her husband died.

"Oh, Doctor, thank heavens! Uncle will be so glad to see you, he keeps telling me to make sure you haven't called … the King was here earlier today, and Uncle talked to him as if he didn't expect to live out the day –"

"He's ill?" I asked, although I knew he was ill for pretty much the entire last year of his life.

"I'm sorry, Doctor; his physicians say he probably won't live past the end of the week."

"What's the date?" I asked her sharply.

"December 2," she said, puzzled.

I bit back an oath. I had been aiming for February 2!

"The Marquis de Cinq-Mars?" I asked anxiously.

"Discovered, tried and executed," she said. "How did you know that?"

"It's a matter of history for me," I told her with some bewilderment.

She smiled – another Mona Lisa smile – and nodded, and I saw more than a physical resemblance between her and her uncle. She did look like a Richelieu, lean and angular, though she was not as startlingly lean as her uncle, and she luckily did not have the prominent Richelieu nose. Then she gave me a deep curtsy; and when she rose, she smiled at the puzzled expression on my face.

"If things had been different, you would have been my aunt," she said, explaining the gesture.

"I wish they had been," I admitted.

"Will of God," she said. "And, praise him, it is his will that you came in time to see Uncle again. Please, this way. He's asleep, but he told me to wake him if you came around, no matter what time of the day or night."

There is a painting by Philippe de Champagne of Armand on his deathbed, and that's how I saw him when the Duchesse let me in the room. His beard no longer the neat tuft of hair on his chin but fully encompassing his lower face; his mustache no longer combed upward in that stupid way the French had adopted in the 17th century but curling protectively over his upper lip; his hair a patchwork of gray and black; his face positively skeletal.

"Pleurisy," the Duchesse whispered, gliding to his bedside. "Uncle? Uncle?" She shook him gently. "Uncle, the Doctor is here." She stepped back and gestured to me, and I knelt by his side and took his hand – like his face, barely more than skin-covered bones – between both of mine and kissed it. His eyelids fluttered, but he didn't stir.

"Armand," I whispered. I could barely hear myself, but a slight smile formed on his face.

"There's only one person who would call me by my first name anymore," he murmured, and his eyes slowly opened.

"I am a bit older than you are," I reminded him, and he chuckled.

"But you don't look it; you look almost exactly like you did when I left you after that unpleasantness with the King's mother."

"That's because you just left me after that unpleasantness with the King's mother," I said, squeezing his hand gently.

His enormous eyes sparkled – then shifted to the Duchesse. "Niece, leave us, and see that nobody disturbs us until I call you." She smiled, curtsied and left the room, closing the door softly. I leaned forward and kissed Armand's mouth gently and briefly, and he sighed contentedly.

"I've been wanting that, just one more time," he said.

"There's plenty more when that came from," I said, kissing him again. "All you want."

"You know, then," he said.

"It's a little later than I intended – I was trying to stop Cinq-Mars, but I guess that's been taken care of anyway."

"Our first meeting, your ship went off course, and at our last, it went off course," Armand observed. "Very poetic."

"She has ideas of her own," I said. "She doesn't go where I want to go, but she goes where I need to go. But – wait, this doesn't have to be our last meeting, Armand!"

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I don't know!" I exclaimed. "I have an idea, I just don't know what it is!"

"Oh, that's comforting."

"Still sarcastic as ever, Armand. I like that. Nobody else does, but I do. OK! Here's what we do. Remember when I took you to see Dorium, and he said that I'd faked my death? That's what we do now! We fake your death! Oh, I am so stupid, I should have seen this before!"

"Slow down, slow down, I'm an old man now –"

"Oh, you're just middle-aged, Armand, and who cares about that? I like your gray hair, it's far better than being bald, though frankly I wouldn't care if you were gray and bald, as long as you were still your sexy and sarcastic self. Armand, here's what we do. Your doctors have said you don't have more than a couple of days, right? Well, I have some interesting medicine that will make it seem as though you're actually really dead. Boo-hoo-hoo, you lie in state, funeral funeral funeral – only it isn't really you. It's a robot!"

"What's a robot?"

I hadn't told him _how_ I'd faked my death, but I was too excited to care now. "Never mind that for now, just say it's a mechanical duplicate that will fool everyone in this time period. They bury said duplicate. Meanwhile, I sneak you aboard the TARDIS and revive you, then I use other bits of technology and knowledge accumulated over millions of years to restore you to health – or to bring you to health, since you were really never very healthy to begin with – et voila! So you'll still be pushing sixty, but you'll be alive and healthy and you'll have at least forty, fifty, sixty years after that, and we can spend them together! No more worrying about messing up future history, we'll just travel the stars together, or find a nice world to spend the days, we can take all your cats too; you won't like what will become of them after you're gone, but I shouldn't tell you that – it's foolproof! Nobody will know! What do you say, Armand?"

He looked at me, and I saw he was thinking it over very hard – and very carefully. His eyes were growing brighter by the moment.

"Oh, what's there to think about?" I exclaimed. "Just say yes, Armand!"

His lips opened – and his eyes fell on something above my head. The light in his eyes dimmed. I turned. It was a crucifix.

"There's still the matter of my vows," he said.

"Armand, those kinds of things get put aside all the time, and for worse reasons. You know that!"

"Yes, I do," he said, sitting up with a sudden fire in his eyes. "Like when a man dies childless and the only person who can inherit his estate is his brother, who was more or less forced in holy orders against his will and inclincation?"

Oh no.

"I wrote up a petition, I had it ready to go, I expected you to come to me when my brother died – you said you'd be there when I needed you – and there was nobody else I would have done this for. I'd even convinced Alphonse's superior to order him to take up the diocese so Maman wouldn't be without an income. But you never showed up."

I couldn't stop myself. I hadn't even considered that possibility. I grabbed at a strand of time where, instead of sitting quietly by as Armand left the church, I raised my veil and let him see it was me. A meeting soon afterward; the proposal put to me; I accepted and stayed in France. And this time, Armand's destiny played out as it was supposed to. No coups, no sudden deaths; he was first minister, yadda yadda yadda, our son inherited the Richelieu duchy instead of his nephew –

I grabbed another strand, and another and another. They all played out that way.

"It would have worked," I half-wailed. "Armand, I was there. In the back, dressed and veiled in black –"

"That was you?" Dismay was etched on his face, much as it felt on mine. "I wondered who you were, why you weren't showing your face – if Henri had an understanding with someone and was waiting for the right time to make it official …"

The whole thing made me want to howl with frustration - "But this will still work! Everyone will think you're dead, so you'll be free of your vows –"

"God will know," Armand said. "And God's not going to let me out of it without following the rules. If it were his will that your proposal succeed, perhaps your ship wouldn't have gone off course, and I would have time to make the arrangements." He lay back and sighed. "And before you say it, no, they won't release a dead man from his vows. Why would they? He's dead. And if I'm alive and pretending to be dead … well, they won't condone that." Another deep sigh, eyes closed; then he opened them and saw my face. "I'm sorry, cherie."

"And I can't go back, it would be crossing my own time stream …"

It could never be.

He clasped his other hand over mine and said nothing aloud, but his eyes said everything. I leaned forward and we kissed again and again, until he called a halt because he was out of breath. We both knew that when someone else joined us, there would be no more chances for us to say or do what we really felt; it had to happen now.

But there were no words in any language for it. Music wouldn't have helped. And we both knew, anyway. Armand reached for a small bell on his nightstand and looked at me meaningfully; I nodded. He rang it, and his niece came back in to find me sitting in a straight chair facing her uncle.

And I stayed there for the next 35 hours and 48 minutes as doctors and priests and noblemen came and went, and as Armand's breathing grew more and more labored.

In the night of December 3-4, I was keeping vigil as Armand slept. The only other person in the room was one of the guards, standing by the door. Then a very soft knock, and another guard came in – it was 3 a.m., the normal time for the change. The relieved guardsman left the room; and when the door shut, the new guardsman, strangely, approached the bed.

"What are you doing?" I asked him. He stopped.

"Madame d'Aiguillon wishes to speak with you, Mademoiselle," the guard said. He turned his head, and I thought I could hear a faint mechanical clicking. I pointed my ultrasonic at him, and he stiffened.

"The Teselecta," I said, folding my arms. "Come to take a strip out of a dying man for his misdeeds. Again. Is Captain Clark still your commander?"

"Yes," he said. My mind overlaid it with the slightly higher-pitched voice of the captain of that time-traveling shape-shifting robot. I imagined the Captain sitting in his command chair on the bridge, holding the transparent microphone to his mouth as he looked at a green-tinted version of me on his viewscreen.

"And have we, um, been to Lake Silencio?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you back to doing this?" I demanded. "I thought you were going to stop acting as judge, jury and executioner."

"Cherie …" Armand rasped. "Cherie, what is happening?" He squinted in the dim candlelight. "Antoine – why are you upsetting my guest?"

"This isn't 'Antoine,' this is a robot," I said. "I never told you about it. Thousands of years into the future, when your species gets time travel, your people will decide that there's no statute of limitations on some crimes, and will go after people it deems war criminals."

"Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, you have been found guilty of causing the starvation deaths of twenty thousand innocents in the Siege of La Rochelle," Captain Clark announced, using Antoine's voice. "You have also caused the execution of some forty-eight nobles and civil servants without a fair trial on flimsy evidence. Twenty-seven of them were not guilty."

"Yes, and just to show how far your race has evolved –" now it was my turn to be heavily sarcastic – "they torture the people they find guilty. Then they go away and let them die. How wonderfully advanced."

"Sounds fair enough to me," Armand said.

I whirled and stared at him. He had that resigned look on his face.

"You can't be serious!" I exclaimed, then turned back to the Teselecta. "If you're going to punish him for La Rochelle, then why haven't you punished –"

"I do not know what means this device uses to torture," Armand interrupted, his voice weary yet strong, "but whatever it is it cannot compare to the eternal punishment of Hell. The punishment it administers must end. I admit my guilt. When I close my eyes, I see the aftermath of the siege …" Armand bowed his head and his hands kneaded each other; for several minutes he did not speak. "I have confessed many times and received absolution, but if the human race still deems me unpunished because it does not consider God's forgiveness enough – it is certainly undeserved - I am prepared to receive my temporal sentence." He folded his hands, raised his head and gazed at his accuser.

The Teselecta stood there, a blank look on its copied face. I wondered what had happened to the real Antoine; then I wondered what Clark and his crew were doing that robo-Antoine remained so completely still. If his bridge crew remained the same as it had been, they were probably having a polite argument of some sort. I edged my way to the bed, sat down on it and prepared to throw myself in the path of the "justice mode." Armand was so weak he couldn't have survived more than a few seconds of it. And maybe the Teselecta crew realized it.

"Your sentence is suspended," the Teselecta finally said, "pursuant to Justice Code 582/3894.58929Apple28Ω. This is the first time we've ever applied this code, which states that a person who admits their deed and expresses contrition cannot be punished. Frankly, we've never had anyone do so to our satisfaction before."

"You should do something about that loophole," Armand said, smiling wryly. "If that gets out, and the Doctor here is sure to make sure it gets out …"

"Your guard is safe," "Antoine" said. "He is aboard. His memory will be wiped and he will be returned to you unharmed. We will complete his shift." And with a bow, the Teselecta took up Antoine's post at the door.

"Aboard?" Armand whispered.

"Miniaturized," I whispered back.

Armand shook his head. "I can trust it?"

"Them," I replied. "Yes. And if you can't, I'm still here."

He settled back against the pillows. "Very well, cherie Doctor."

Dawn broke; Armand only had a few sips of tea for breakfast, though his niece and I both tried to get him to have something else. At 9, "Antoine" was relieved. A few minutes before 10, Armand began gasping for breath. Doctors examined him and shook their heads; they ordered him bled, and I bit my tongue. I think he might have survived the pleurisy if he hadn't been bled.

About noon, he asked the duchesse to leave, saying he didn't want her to see him die. He seemed about to tell me to follow her, but I gave him a look and he merely shook his head and smiled ruefully. His breathing grew more and more labored. Finally I helped him sit up, supporting him with an arm around his shoulders. A priest recited a prayer in Latin. Armand kept breathing very deliberately, very slowly. He let his head fall against my shoulder, as if he were too weak to hold it up, but when I looked down at him he winked at me. I touched my forehead to his, despite all the clergymen and others present, and I felt terrible stabbing pains in my lungs, mixed with a sense that relief was at hand. One overwhelming wave of deep love; a sigh, another, and his eyes closed.

I lowered him back to his pillow. He didn't stir. Someone held a candle to his lips. The flame did not flicker.

I told his niece, who couldn't speak, but gave me a box and embraced me. I told her I wouldn't stay for the funeral, and she smiled wistfully and nodded as if she had expected that.

I carried the box back to the TARDIS and opened it in the console room. In the box was a small piece of blue silk that I recognized as having come from the dress I had worn at our first meeting; a silver and black lock of hair inside a silver locket; one of his cardinal's robes, neatly folded; a buff-colored hat with a black plume I recognized as the one he had been wearing when we met; the rapier he had worn both at our first meeting and at La Rochelle; a beautiful book bound in leather and a note in Armand's handwriting. The book was written in Armand's hand, filled end to end. I still haven't been able to bring myself to read it.

I went into Armand's room with the box and lay on the bed. For a few minutes I had thought I would be coming back here with him. And what difference would it have made, relatively speaking? Forty, fifty, sixty years, it scarcely mattered; barely more than a blip to me. Still, it would have been good to see Armand healthy and strong and free of care …

I wanted to hurt the TARDIS. I imagined taking a crowbar to the time rotor. I imagined flying her into a star. I imagined taking her over the event horizon of a black hole.

I had a very distinct sense that she was sorry, but it had to be this way – the same kinds of things I had said to Armand. And he, renowned for holding grudges, hadn't held one against me …

So instead of taking a crowbar to the time rotor, I lay on his sumptuous bed and cried.

"So what are we doing here?"

It occurred to me that I had fallen into a reverie and left Koschei hanging. Armand's coffin lay on the console room floor still.

"He's gone … why do the Silence still want him?"

"He was still the only human who could remember them without assistance," I said. "I suppose they knew this was their best chance to get a DNA sample. In any case, his remains disappeared before the French Revolution and weren't returned until about 1830. And I told him I would be there for him …"

"So that's where we're going next?" Koschei said.

"Right. If the old girl lets me."


End file.
